There Is No Chosen one, There Is Only Vader
by psychotol
Summary: Following "There Is No Order There Is Only Chaos" (read first so you know what's going on), Ahsoka and friends work to try to save the galaxy, or at least themselves. It's a bit horrible in there, so, careful now.
1. 1 - One Year On

Constraints: Follows "There Is No Order, There Is Only Chaos."

Synopsis: Three former enemies have settled into their new job as semi-independent bounty hunters and freedom fighters. Can they continue when liberty dies to thunderous applause?

There Is No Chosen One There Is Only Vader

Content: Some fairly nasty shit occurs in here.

* * *

"Hajarett Oba?"

The Nautolan turned around asking "Yeah? And you are?"

"I'm your arresting bounty hunter, I'm arresting you for twenty large, you do not have to say anything, and I like it that way," said the teen Togruta female.

"Sure," he said "I'll come quietly," he made to walk past her asking "This way is it?"

When the Togruta made to correct him, he threw a punch aimed across her face.

His fist ended up pinned in space, about 3cm from her face. She said "Nope," and pointed off in the direction of the bondsman office saying "That way. Come on."

He walked off in the indicated direction half snarling half sighing "Shavit."

* * *

"And where have you been?" asked Asajj as she pointed at her watch.

"Earning money," said Ahsoka as she held up the case of credits.

Asajj nodded saying "Good, that fuel was expensive," as she pointed inside the small shuttle pod they used to land on world.

There were a couple of practical reasons why they used this shuttle pod instead of their actual star ship for landing and on world operations, the public reason is that this vehicle is more manoeuvrable, it could go more places, it was more agile, they could put it more places than their star ship, including jungles, natural and urban.

They got on and sent "war horse from tick, ready for pickup."

Two hisses of static indicated an acknowledgement.

They got back on their ship, docking through the modified cargo bay, and the ship jumped to hyperspace. Asajj and Ahsoka got out, telekinetically unloading the fuel drums.

The other reason why Warhorse never touched down walked in saying "Should arrive at Shili in four hours."

"Okay," said Ahsoka.

"Barriss, Ahsoka bagged a crim down there."

"How much did we get?" asked Barriss.

"Twenty thousand," replied Ahsoka.

Barriss nodded and asked "Ready?"

Asajj set down the last fuel drum and walked up to the other two.

The three of them floated up and each telekinetically strangled the other two.

Ahsoka was the first to drop out, and then Asajj.

Barriss nodded and landed with a smug smile on her face.

"We really need another way to work out who gets the odd credit," said Ahsoka, "I can't believe throttling each other is the only way to assign it."

"What, like rock paper scissors?" asked Asajj.

The three of them shuddered as they recalled how, using the force, their hands ended up in constant flux between rock, paper and scissors as none of them could settle on any of them, constantly adapting to the environment.

It had been about a year since they had started working together on a mixture of basic bounty work and altruistic freedom fighting,

Barriss had a ship, but couldn't show her face anywhere. Asajj had no allegiances as such, but felt like she could trust Ahsoka, who trusted Barriss who Asajj didn't.

Between the three of them, they knew a good deal of the CIS, Republic, and Jedi scene, but their knowledge was considerably less current on all of those, except where Ahsoka received updates through her Shili Home guard contacts, and that was limited to what it was considered safe to share with local forces.

"Yeah, it's just Barriss always wins ... Forget it," said Ahsoka as she opened the case and started dividing the credits, 6667 for Barriss, 6666 for Ahsoka and Asajj.

Asajj went back to moving the fuel from the drums into the ship's tanks.

* * *

Ahsoka's dad watched the news, not really expecting much.

"Ooop, this just in, we have a rumour that General Grievous is dead."

"Yeah? How many times was Asajj supposed to be dead? Or Aurra?" he asked.

Then there was some footage showing Grievous in a fight with what looked like a human Jedi. This footage looked like it was off of a security camera.

The human, had a beard, light skin and light brown hair, was sent over the edge of the platform.

He seemed to have lost his sabre. He telekinetically grabbed a blaster and it flew to his hand. He shot Grievous.

Grievous stood there trembling and spewing fire out of every visible gap and orifice.

Ahsoka's dad leaned forward and when Grievous fell, he commented "Karkin' hell. He's really dead."

Other members of the village had also been watching the news, and Ahsoka's mum entered the room and looked at the recording.

Everyone in the village was now either laughing in triumph or asking "what's going on?" or asking "For real?"

After that mass raid on Corouscant, there was debate over whether the CIS were newly confident or desperately lashing out.

Count Dooku had been killed in that attack, head was cut off, karkload of cops had been through that ship and seen it, local coroner had confirmed it was in fact Count Dooku, not a double, none of that shavite.

Was this war finally close to being won?

That would be weird. The galaxy had spent so long fighting this war, it was hard to imagine the war being over. It had just become this ambient thing, sun shines, clouds rain, grass grows, republic fights CIS in knock down drag out galaxy wide war, same old shavite.

But when one side or the other finally gains serious advantage over the other, things start happening thick and fast. That had been the way such long lasting wars in the past had gone. Years of war being normal, then a flood of victories on one side, then one side has the other over a barrel.

"Does Ahsoka know yet do you reckon?" asked Ahsoka's mum.

He checked his watch and said "She should be back in a couple of hours."

* * *

Ahsoka landed the Tick in the villages hanger.

Like the village, a great effort had been taken to disguise it, This had been done to maintain the character of the area, not because some bell end was threatening to invade. But it worked for hiding from that too. Basic job, rectangle of soil would lift up and slide to the side to allow vehicles in and out.

Her dad was waiting in the hanger.

"Hey Ahsoka," said her dad.

"Hey Dad. You get the news?"

"About your work or about the death of General Grievous?" he asked.

"Grievous is dead?" asked Ahsoka, not sure whether or not to believe this.

"Ooh yeah, Obi Wan fought the karker, lost his lightsabre, used a blaster, ker-whoomph, karker lit up like one of those incendiary drums from that slave farm on Nal Hutta."

"Brilliant," said Ahsoka.

"So that's Dooku gone, Grievous gone, I mean, this war's winding down at long last, right?"

Ahsoka thought about it.

"Right?"

Ahsoka finally said "We can hope, I mean, it looks good, but it's looked good before. Those two are leaders high up in the separatist command, but don't forget there's a kark load of worlds in the Confederation of Independent Systems, each has a government with its standing army, it could still go on a while yet. Last look I got at the Intel said we were starting to gain a little traction, but then that fleet hit Corouscant. Still, that fleet seemed like an attempt by their snake to cut the head off of our snake because they didn't feel they could hold territory anymore."

"So?"

"Well, it looks good, but be prepared for disappointment," said Ahsoka.

"Okay. ... If this war does end though, you reckon your friends will be able to set foot on Republic territory again?"

"Hard to say," said Ahsoka, "theoretically, Asajj should be able to claim reasonable orders, nothing she did in the context of war fighting goes above and beyond what is militarily justifiable, no certainty, but odds are she'd have her wants dropped when the war ends. Barriss on the other hand, she's a traitor, that's a completely different matter. Depending on the settlement reached, she might be able to freely roam CIS worlds, but Republic, absolutely no way."

"Barriss ... The green piece of shavit that framed you for something the Republic kills over. ... I can't believe you're friends with her again."

Ahsoka sighed and said "I can't believe it either, but for some reason ... ... Can't explain it."

"Well, you could say you walked into a door, or fell down the stairs, or hit yourself in the face when opening a particularly tough packet of sweets, or-" started her dad, running through every cliché he could think of for things abused spouses often say to cover up such abuse in the holonet dramas that were available.

"It's not that," said Ahsoka, "For now, she's not currently a threat to me, no motive for her at present, she's building money, I don't want to know what she's likely to do with it if she feels she has enough to try another attack like she tried on Kamino, but with the war winding down, that set of motives should disappear too."

"Right, well, guess we'll just see what happens then. I hope your trust in her isn't misplaced."

"Yeah. ... " Ahsoka checked her watch saying "Oh look. Ten to food."

* * *

Asajj and Barriss sat in the cockpit looking out at Shili.

"I don't get it," said Asajj.

"What?" asked Barriss.

"Red Grass."

Barriss looked at the vast red fields and said "there are numerous red photosynthesising molecules, the Turu grass of Shili just happens to use one."

Asajj nodded and shifted her position, looking out at one of Shili's moons.

"Is there a family out there you are no longer able to contact?" asked Barriss.

"Err ... ..." Asajj was considering what to say and then asked "How did you come up with that?"

"This is Ahsoka's home world, where she's meeting with her family, something neither of us are able to do," said Barriss.

"Right, well, I suppose the closest thing I have to a father figure is Master Ky Nerec, a human Jedi who adopted me on Rattatak after my master as in of slaves, Hal'sted was killed in front of me. Second closest thing would be Mother Talzin, the Nightsister high mother who gave me up to that Siniteen, I must have been, like, one or two at the time? ... No way to know what was normal or healthy at that time, and Ky's reaction when I tried to give him a hand job to show my gratitude ... "

Barriss almost burst out laughing. That Asajj was clearly molested by Hal'stad wasn't funny, but Ky being approached by a child for ... ... Actually, that shouldn't be funny either. Absurd, but not funny. Barriss asked "How did he react?"

"A rather flustered and rushed run through the sexual health and relationships I would have been taught had I been going to a Republic school."

Barriss nodded. Sexual health and relationships education is taught practically the same time as basic numeracy and literacy is taught, the idea being to inform children of their right to refuse sexual advances, of the dangers posed by unprotected sex, and that if the adults in their life try to shag them while they're under the age of consent, the police will automatically treat that as rape.

Problem was you'd have to grow up in the Republic. Asajj grew up in a lawless narcoworld. The clue is in the description.

"He was horrified that that had been happening to me. I was just glad to be able to cut cockslime out of my diet. What about you? Closest thing you had to a family?" asked Asajj.

"Born on a star liner apparently, grew up in the temple, Luminara took me on as her Padawan, graduated to Knight shortly after the second Geonosis job, then, I ... realised something had to be done about the clones, had someone feed their husband some explosive nanodroids to blow up the Jedi temple he worked in, killed her in her cell from outside while Ahsoka was alone with her, tried to-"

"Okay, that part I know," said Asajj.

Barriss nodded. She then added "I accidentally killed Luminara when I was trying to blow up the Kamino system," almost grimacing at the statement.

Asajj looked to Barriss and asked "how did that happen?"

"She must have had a force vision. She ordered her ship's crew to abandon ship and parked the ship in the way of the missile, missile was in hyperspace all the way to target, point being was to get it deep enough into the mantle of Kamino's host star to assure detonation, but it instead broke into the shields of Luminara's ship, and squashed itself against the back, and fizzled. ... Luminara took a lethal dose."

"Yeesh," winced Asajj.

"Yeah," said Barriss.

"You were close to her?"

"Yeah. We're wary of taking pride as that can lead us down a dark path, but fighting off the emotion of pride was a daily challenge," said Barriss.

Asajj nodded and commented "Ky was good too. More like a parent to me than even the Nightsisters ever were. Mind, when I went after Dooku for turning on me, the Nightsisters did have my back. Not sure Ky would have gone along with that, but if that karking pirate hadn't slotted him, I probably wouldn't have gone dark side like I did. His death ... ... ... He was so good to me, trained me up, taught me to meditate, to manipulate the force, to fight, and him dying was that hard a kick to the ovaries."

"Attachment," said Barriss.

"Eh?" asked Asajj.

"Attachment, possessive love, that is another path to the dark side. It's something I sensed in Anakin a LOT, especially when his padawan was in trouble. It's not a good thing," explained Barriss.

Asajj looked at Barriss and finally asked "Oh, and you can just switch it off when you need to can you?"

"It may be hard, but you can't want to go dark side again can you? You've seen what that's like." Asked Barriss.

"Yeah, because you really are a good role model when it comes to being a lightsider," replied Asajj.

"It was not a fit of rage that led me to attack the Jedi temple and the Kamino system," said Barriss, "the Jedi order is upside down in the shavit, and it don't know it because it's too used to the smell. I don't know what to do about that."

"Yeah. Reinforces the impression I held for the longest time that there's no such thing as a good guy."

"I'd say there is, but they don't always stay good." Said Barriss.

" ... Yeah," agreed Asajj, "that works I guess."


	2. 2 - This Just In

Ahsoka had just about finished her meal when suddenly she winced.

"You alright Ahsoka?" asked her dad.

Her mum also looked concerned.

"I'm feeling deaths through the force. Jedi masters," said Ahsoka.

"Masters plural? In one sitting?" asked her dad.

"I'm going to check the news and see what's going on, excuse me," said Ahsoka as she got up and left.

She got to her family's home and turned on the holoviewer, they were in the middle of discussing some footage of a Jedi, Ki Adi Mundi leading a charge to a bridge when his clone troops suddenly stop and ...

"What? ... ?" asked Ahsoka, stunned.

"There have been more reports of Jedi being killed by their clone troopers, we're waiting for someone to explain this, but for now, we can only wonder, is this some kind of malfunction? Has Kamino botched the job of breeding these people?"

"Can't be a malfunction," said Ahsoka as she scrutinised the images and the information she had been able to gather so far. Whoever ordered the clones to kill the Jedi, this had to have been an order, nothing else could explain it, only the supreme chancellor outranked a Jedi master in the clone army, so only he could have ordered it.

But why the karking hell would Palpatine order the clones to go around killing Jedi? That was just stupid.

Her mum and dad entered behind her and watched. Her brother too.

"Have they rejoined the force then?" asked Ahsoka's brother, a little too cheerfully for her dad's taste causing him to slap him across the montrals.

Ahsoka finally said "I'm going to try and find Padme, see if she knows what's going on, because this ... ... This is karked up," as she set out towards the hanger.

"There could be a news release any minute," said her dad.

"We've now just heard that the entire senate has been recalled by the Supreme Chancellor, but given how far away a lot of these people are, so that could take a couple of days," said the news anchor.

Ahsoka nodded saying "I'll be there in a couple of hours, I'll hear from her before this hits the news."

* * *

"Oh good, yet another world we can never set foot on forever," said Asajj.

"At least you have worlds you can set foot on," replied Barriss, she then asked Ahsoka "What would we want to do that for?" asked Barriss.

"I want to find out what I can about why clone troops seem to be killing Jedi everywhere, it's on the news, they're karking killing them all over the place, and the only person higher than a Jedi master in the chain of command is Palpatine, I figure Padme might know what's led him to do this."

"Could be he's the secret Sith," commented Barriss, "looking at the way the laws have been changing all this time, legally he's now unassailable, he's the only one who can preside over any case brought against him," said Barriss.

"But he's ... ... " Ahsoka tried to come up with some kind of defence for Palpatine, but she honestly couldn't think of a thing to say about this. She eventually said "let's just get to Corouscant and find out shall we?"

Barriss nodded and went to the cockpit, setting the course and initiating the auto navigation system to take them to Corouscant. Asajj and Ahsoka had followed her into the cockpit.

"What do you know about Palpatine?" asked Barriss.

"Former senator for Naboo, became supreme chancellor when Valorum was voted out by a no confidence motion during the Naboo siege, since then we've had this separatist crisis going on that eventually erupted into the clone wars," recounted Ahsoka.

"What about interactions with him?" asked Barriss.

"Hardly any direct, he's always seemed reasonable, elegant in the way he addresses everyone," said Ahsoka, "if he was Sith, he'd take having motions being defeated a bit less graciously wouldn't he?"

"Not if he knew there would be an opportunity to move things forward later," said Barriss, "they may seethe with rage, but they are not without discipline."

"I guess," said Ahsoka.

"I don't see anything wrong with the theory," said Asajj, "Count Dooku's always calm and considered, even when he told me I'd 'failed him for the last time,'" imitating Dooku's voice almost perfectly and then continued "Count Dooku managed to hold together the Confederation of Independent Systems for years, up to and beyond his death, right? You think he'd do that by threatening to kill people left and right at CIS Senate meetings?"

"There's that," said Ahsoka.

"That's the problem with being Anakin's padawan for so long, so much of what you learned was violence and mayhem, the soft power is where it's at," said Barriss.

* * *

Padme watched the smoke rising from the temple in the distance. Not much else to do other than wait for the expected numbers of senators to arrive for the session Palpatine had called.

And that meeting with Anakin hadn't been that reassuring anyway. The more dismissive he was of her concerns, the less she was reassured.

And then there's the thing Anakin said about the Jedi trying to overthrow the republic. Mace had apparently tried to assassinate Palpatine.

Now he was off to Mustufar to "end this war."

Thing is, does that mean negotiate with the separatist leaders gathered there to secure a peace treaty, or ... ...

Should have asked more questions.

This whole situation is wrong.

A small ship landed on the apartment's landing pad, prompting security to rush towards it, Padme followed, pulling her own weapon.

"It's alright", one of them called, "its Ahsoka."

Padme hadn't seen Ahsoka in about a year, her montrals and lekku had grown not dramatically, but enough that from memory, it was noticeable.

"Padme, I don't suppose you'd know anything about a possible move to, say, I dunno, ... have the clone army kill every Jedi in the galaxy, would you?"

"Anakin said Mace tried to assassinate Chancellor Palpatine," said Padme, "but to claim every Jedi was in on the plot, I mean, I can't even begin to think what could have motivated the Jedi to try to seize power, and to say every single Jedi would be involved in that, I mean," said Padme, not certain what else to say.

Ahsoka tried to decide how much of her conversation with Barriss and Asajj to reveal. She eventually asked "so it's just these few hours over which this has been happening is it?"

Padme nodded. "I was only aware of the council being involved, every Jedi out there being involved is news to me."

C3PO then approached them saying "Excuse me Padme, the speeder to the senate has arrived."

Padme said "I must go. Would you like to come?"

Ahsoka thought about it and eventually said "no, I'm going to see what I can find at the temple." She went back to her spacecraft and flew off to the smoking ruins.

* * *

CT-23141 watched as a small shuttle pod approached the temple landing pad. The other clones alongside himself prepared to bring up their blasters if the shuttle pod did anything that looked like an attack, but no, it kept approaching slowly until the pilot was clearly visible.

He walked up to it as it landed, on it's repulsors, not its landing struts, and the engines were idling, not off, he noted, pilot must be concerned she'd have to escape in a hurry.

The pilot opened the door.

"Ahsoka Tano. You know I was sorry to hear you had quit the order? Now I'm glad, it means you're not part of an enemy force."

"Yeah, how glad am I of that?" Asked Ahsoka, seemingly relaxed about the situation. She then asked "How did that happen anyway? I mean, I heard Mace tried to kill Palpatine, but we've had Jedi go rogue as individuals before, we've had Krell, Dooku, Barriss, various others, how does Mace had a go at Palpatine turn into the order as a whole had a go at Palpatine?"

"All I can say is Palpatine must have a good reason to believe it, he's told us to execute contingency order six six, that was put in place for just this kind of emergency."

Ahsoka nodded and asked "Any chance I could look around?"

The clone trooper looked thoughtful for a few minutes but eventually said "I don't see why not."

He led Ahsoka into the temple. Ahsoka knew they'd be watching her carefully, so she'd be able to little more than look around.

Shortly after entering the temple, she quickly found herself confronted by the sight of dead younglings.

"Younglings too?" she asked, barely keeping the disgust out of her voice at the apparent inclusion of not even padawans, these would have been at initiate level ...

"All Jedi," said the clone trooper in that flat voice of theirs. "That's the order."

Ahsoka nodded and continued on.

She walked through an area where some of the knights that had been killed seemed to have been killed with a lightsabre.

"Who killed them?"

"Darth Vader."

"Darth Vader?" asked Ahsoka.

"Your former master, Anakin Skywalker. He left the Jedi order too."

This was unreal. She was trying to maintain her cool, and feeling a bit sick here. Anakin, killing Jedi.

Anakin Skywalker.

Sky guy.

Obi-Wans padawan.

Killed Jedi.

Clones obeying a coverall order is one thing, but how does Anakin end up killing Jedi just because Mace or even the council as a whole attacked Palpatine?

She walked on.

They entered another area.

More dead younglings.

By lightsabre.

"Anakin kill these ones too?" Now she was having trouble keeping her voice even, it was almost fully a sob.

"Yes."

Ahsoka maintained enough control to keep from lashing out, but now tears were pouring out her eyes, and she felt like she was covered in shavit and was starting to feel her lunch make its way back up.

She started towards the nearest toilets but stopped and asked "there aren't any cadavers in there is there?" pointing at the toilets.

"No, it's clear."

Ahsoka continued into the toilets.

After about half a minute of barfing and then five minutes of rinsing her mouth out, she knelt down and started to meditate, trying to force herself into a state where she can function. This state of shock was doing her no favours, she had to figure out something ... ...

Like what? She practically had everything worth knowing now.

It was clear to her that Anakin had now gone dark side, it was at least highly likely Palpatine was Darth Sidious ...

The temple had a security grid. Anakin might have contacted Palpatine or whoever was issuing his orders from here. She could at least confirm or exonerated Palpatine for at least her own purposes.

She left the toilets and went to the security centre.

On her way up there, she heard an exchange of blasters, and someone shouting over the comms of some nearby Clone Troopers "Contact, Jedi, front door, Yoda and Obi Wan."

She thought about what to do, should she run down to the front door and help them? Then she'd be a fugitive too.

Security centre was closer, would there be any clones there though?

One way to find out.

Ahsoka broke into a run.

When she entered, she found it empty of clone troopers.

She could see the fight unfolding below.

Yoda and Obi-wan seemed to be handling it.

Still, she could do something to help them out.

She opened a function generator app and hooked it into the comm. System, selecting the 501st legion channel, and she selected a frequency that would be just at the upper edges of the human hearing band, and slowly brought that up, until the volume was sufficient to really hurt them.

That seemed to help mess them up. Ahsoka started bringing the frequency down slightly, being careful to keep it high enough that they can't be sure that they're actually hearing this or if it's just their heads that's making this noise.

It worked. Eventually Obi Wan and Yoda ran out of clones to kill.

This done, Ahsoka turned her attention to searching through the footage to see what happened, what Anakin might have said in conference with Palpatine ...

The footage Ahsoka went through included the sickening slaughter of Jedi Knights, Padawans, younglings, Really young younglings ...

"Anakin, you ... ... " This was vile to watch.

The footage eventually came to Anakin in conference with Palpatine.

"You have done well, my new apprentice," said Darth Sidious, "Now lord Vader-"

Ahsoka paused it.

Darth Sidious didn't quite look ... ...

Skin was puffy.

"Ahsoka?"

She waved an acknowledgement to Obi Wan and Yoda. She said "Apparently the clones killed all the Jedi because 'orders are orders', but Anakin, or Lord Vader in certain circles ... ... "

She brought up a picture of Palpatine on her data pad and held it up behind the hologram.

"You have doubts here?"

"Sidious's face is all karked up. Apparently Mace attacked him, at least that's what Anakin told Padme after ... ... what he did to this place."

"He's called a session of the senate, we might find out then," said Obi wan as he went to the server room.

Ahsoka brought up the holonet footage of the session on her data pad.

"The attempt on my life has left me scarred, and deformed," Palpatine said. He sounded exactly like Sidious did in the holofootage of Sidious's conversation with Anakin.

Palpatine continued through his proclamation of his new empire.

"That's it then. Karking Palpatine The whole karking time," she stood up and stepped away, turning the holonet feed off.

"Anakin there is no, anymore, not. ... Vader there is only," said Yoda.

Ahsoka nodded, absorbing everything.

"That's it," said Obi-Wan, "The recall signal has been changed to a warning telling anyone receiving it to stay away, hopefully that will stop any more Jedi falling into the trap."

Ahsoka slapped herself across her forehead saying "Right, I should have thought of that." She then asked "Alright, so, don't think we want to leave Sidious in poser any longer than we absolutely have to, and I bet he's basically made himself unassailable or Mace wouldn't have had to try killing him ... Unless I'm missing something ... "

"No, we had Anakin try to monitor what Palpatine was up to for us precisely because of all these legal powers he was accumulating," said Obi-Wan.

"Kill Sidious, we must," said Yoda.

"And Vader?" asked Ahsoka.

"Yes ... ... Too, him," said Yoda.

Ahsoka nodded.

"Please, send me to kill Sidious," said obi Wan, "don't make me kill Anakin."

"On Sidious's level, you are not," said Yoda.

Ahsoka was about to say she had never known Palpatine to get into a fight, but Senate security sure didn't stop Mace. She eventually said "I have friends who might be willing to help us."

"Friends?" asked Yoda.

"Who?" asked Obi-Wan.

Ahsoka hesitated a moment, but eventually, quickly and quietly said "Barriss and Asajj," leaving that to hang.

"Barriss," repeated Obi Wan.

"Asajj and," continued Yoda.

"Yeah ... ... " said Ahsoka, letting the three of them absorb the awkward.

"Better than nothing I suppose," said Obi-Wan.

"Barriss is better at violence than Asajj, better at hiding her force signature too, so, I'd suggest Yoda bring her to help fight Sidious. Asajj would probably love another change to have a go at Anakin, I suppose this is probably going to be a bit selfish of me considering Obi-Wan has to do Anakin, but can I help with Sidious?" asked Ahsoka.

"No. The last time, you did any sabre training, when was?"

"Three days ago, we do struggle for work sometimes, so we can often maintain n intensive schedule," said Ahsoka, she then said "if Sidious is going to be that much of a struggle, what we could do is all pile onto him, then all do Vader."

"No. Both simultaneously, we must try to do," said Yoda, "Obi-wan, find your student, you must, Ahsoka, support Obi-wan, you must."

"Okay. What about Barriss? Think you can use her?" asked Ahsoka.

Yoda looked thoughtful and then said "Well, very. Her to me, send."

* * *

"Very well," said Barriss, "Just don't kark up my ship, alright?"

"I suspect we kark it up at our peril," said Ahsoka, "a form of peril that'll beat you to the punch," she told Barriss.

Barriss nodded and went to select something to wear saying "remember when I told everyone in that court room so? Yoda was there. Which means I told him so too."

Ahsoka looked at her watch and said "Wow. Nine hours, fifteen minutes, and three seconds."

"Yeah," said Asajj, "that's a lot of self control right there."

"You up for this Barriss?" asked Ahsoka, "Yoda reckons Sidious is a bit hard, he killed Mace."

Barriss, now down to her bra and knickers eventually selected a disguise she felt should make her look like she belongs in a senate building and said "we'll have to do it sooner or later. Galaxy won't be safe until he's dead."

"what form factor you thinking?" asked Asajj.

"Bit of Soruso, bit of Vapaad," said Barriss,

"You've expressed discomfort with Vapaad," said Asajj.

"I know," said Barriss, finishing getting dressed, "it's tricky when you're trying not to step into the dark side," as she telekinetically picked up her sabres, placing them in wrist holsters inside her dress's sleeves.

Asajj and Ahsoka absorbed an implication from Barriss's answer and Ahsoka finally asked "you planning on coming back from that?"

Barriss thought over her response and eventually bowed at them saying "force be with you," then went to their shuttle pod, also picking up a Barabadium powered grenade, a couple of communicators, and her microelectronic tools.

Ahsoka and Asajj watched Barriss leave through the airlock force field, and once the door had closed and locked, they went to the cockpit.


	3. 3 - Attack

Obi-Wan got done talking to Padme, she wasn't having any of it.

But she was definitely worried about Anakin. Her force signature screamed it.

All he had to do was follow her.

When she left her apartment, Obi-Wan followed her. They were headed for her landing pad.

She weren't going to like this, but he had to get to Anakin.

If this was the only way it was happening, it was how it would happen.

* * *

Yoda was waiting near the hanger for the Mirialan Senator (rarely used because of the occupation of Mirial.)

Barriss landed her shuttle pod and got out. She walked past Yoda's position and dropped off the comm. "No session at this time, right?" Whispered Barriss.

Yoda picked it up saying "adjourned, they all are, alone, Sidious is."

"Good," said Barriss, she then added "The comms are rigged with life sensors, if we both die, so will Sidious. Any problems with that?"

Yoda absorbed the meaning of the last statement. "Misgivings, I have, but options, I don't see."

"Front door and rotunda aperture work for forward attack positions?" asked Barriss.

"Agreed," said Yoda.

Barriss walked off and Yoda re-entered the service ducts.

* * *

Asajj and Ahsoka waited in the cockpit.

"Ooop, altitude, velocity, not just a speeder," said Ahsoka as she tracked Obi-Wan's comm.

"Right," said Asajj as she watched the target box move across the HUD.

They waited for the ship to jump to hyperspace and then five minutes before they locked the navicomp onto Obi-Wans communicator and let the ship run into hyperspace.

Barriss's share had mostly gone on things that would increase the resilience and firepower of this ship. She had also been smart about what she bought (well, what she had them buy), because she had this crystal furnace from which they had all got their new sabre crystals, she also made the crystal components for blasters, so they could take deactivated turrets and reactivate them, they had also been able to make up shields and ablative armour from bits and pieces.

Over the year, they had turned the ship into a gunship with turrets that could cover assigned sectors in an automated defensive mode, prioritising and destroying targets, reprioritising as needed, they could also be focused on a single target if they felt the need to do so, even the rear mounted ones could point forwards, or the left ones shoot to the right.

There really isn't anything else to do when you're the only one who can't step off the ship.

The result was it was hard for fighters to assail it without someone who's force active at the helm, that can seriously kark up a star destroyer, but it didn't pack the punch of a star destroyer, and it certainly didn't have the endurance, they'd have trouble getting anywhere if they stayed in the fight for too long due to the power the turrets demanded, so prior to initiating an attack, they'd work out where they'd go for fuel when they escape and how much fuel they'd need to get there, and if they get too close to that, they'd start seeing alarms going off and that would prompt them to do one.

In some cases, they'd drop off a fuel cache a couple of light minutes away so they could stay in a fight longer.

"How did Obi-Wan react?" asked Asajj.

"About the same as me," said Ahsoka. She elaborated "This is Sky Guy here, how does he of all people pick up a karking Darth name?"

"He's prone to rage," said Asajj, "this is something that was apparent first time we fought."

"Yavin 4, right?" asked Ahsoka.

"Yeah," said Asajj, she then said "he's a ferocious one. Considerable difference from his master, Obi-Wan."

Ahsoka chuckled saying "Don't I know it. How often did they end up locked in an argument?"

"Wish I could have been the one to decapitate Count Dooku though," said Asajj, "that treacherous piece of shavit."

"Yeah, well what's vengeance good for?" asked Ahsoka.

"Certainly wouldn't have helped us work with Barriss all this year," said Asajj, "you know on that job we first worked together on, I kept seeing points at which I could jump her and thinking 'I really should hurt her, I shouldn't pass this opportunity up,' but that wasn't what we were being paid for, and then when we collected our reward, it was like, 'what's the point?'"

* * *

Barriss got in one of the repulsorpods and launched from its dock. She then floated around using force telekinesis to start all the pods floating around the Grand Convocation chamber.

They were set up to not do anything other than stay very still unless the operator was commanding it to go somewhere, so for now, she sent them all to about the middle of the chamber.

Barriss wasn't going to spend more than a few minutes grabbing pods and bringing them out, to do the whole chamber would take all week, and someone was bound to walk in on her doing it, possibly the senate arriving for a session some point next month.

She grabbed her data pad and sliced into the floating repulsorpods, setting most of them up to do one thing and the one she was in to do another. She then got on the comm. Sending "Yoda from Barriss, ready at FAP, you?"

"Ready, I am."

"Okay, initiating distraction," said Barriss as she hit the initiate command.

While the Repulsorpods started moving around, Barriss placed the modified grenade on the floor of her one, which would stay a few metres over her orbiting. It would ensure that should she die, then Sidious, who would be standing over her dead body, would be well within the lethal radius when the bomb no longer read her life signs.

The repulsorpods she didn't occupy were starting to move seemingly randomly, some going down and tapping the iris through which the podium rose.

This drew a curious Sidious and Mas Amedda to the podium.

Sidious ordered the two imperial guards off to sort it out as he continued to watch.

Yoda should be able to stop them getting out and possibly bringing reinforcements.

Barriss didn't need to peek over the side to see Sidious and Mas, there was s camera droid watching the aperture in the iris. She needed to keep over the side to make Sidious aware of her presence and get him to send Mas away, also into Yoda's ambush.

She did, and he did.

The podium rose with Sidious alone in it.

Barriss crossed her wrists, grabbing her sabres, but not drawing them yet. She orbited the space the Podium occupied when fully extended.

"Well, well, Barriss Offee. ... You are supposed to be dead, your execution was scheduled almost a year ago now,"

"Ah ... I KNEW I was supposed to do something, I completely forgot, I do apologise," replied Barriss.

"Well, that you're here, tells me you expect to kill me and, what now? Restore the republic? Do you think the senate will applaud you or condemn you for throwing the future of the galaxy into doubt?"

"Not immediately," said Barriss.

"So what do you hope to achieve?" asked Sidious.

"Freedom," said Barriss.

"Chaos," replied Sidious.

"Chaos has a better chance of achieving freedom than an evil order," said Barriss.

"Well then, if you're going to do it," said Sidious, as he pulled his sabre. "I suggest you make a start," at that point he telekinetically shoved Barriss back.

Barriss pulled her sabres as she was pushed back but then telekinetically pulled on Sidious, her feet landing on the edge of her repulsorpod as Sidious started on a trajectory over her. Both Sidious and Barriss lit their sabres and Barriss blocked Sidous's swipe.

He landed on his feet and Barriss followed him down and he blocked her swipes.

From that point, she worked him, keeping the pressure on him.

* * *

"Kark this thing is slow, they're half a karking hour ahead of us now," groused Asajj.

"Just hope Obi-Wan can do without us for that time," said Ahsoka, she then notes "Feels like Barriss is struggling a bit."

"Yeah," said Asajj, "hope Yoda has her back. ... Mind, that would be a bit ironic considering what he was like a year ago."

"I think he's over that phase now," said Ahsoka, "nothing like finding you've been epically lied to for shaking you out of your complacency."

Asajj laughed. "Question is, when they've killed Sidious, will he then kill Barriss?"

Ahsoka eventually said "Guess we're going to find out."

Yoda saw Barriss fly overhead, thrown by Sidious, but she orientated herself so her feet were pointing in her direction of travel, landing on the side of the podium, facing Sidious when he leapt towards her. At this point, Yoda light his sabre and aimed to skewer Sidious only for Sidious to throw him down.

His attack on Barriss failed and all three were on the floor of the office.

All three of them were in the fight now, Barriss using Vapaad, Yoda using Maki, Sidious just about holding the two of them off.

"We're coming up on Mustufar," said Asajj, "get ready for anything."

"Got that, all turrets autodefence," said Ahsoka as she watched the sensors for whatever they would find upon leaving hyperspace.

When they dropped out of hyperspace Ahsoka saw no weapons, imperial or-

"Bandit, bandit, vulture droids ... ... " Ahsoka was looking at the sensors. She eventually said "they're in sleep mode."

"How many are there?" asked Asajj.

"Three hundred and seven," said Ahsoka, "they're parked in a stable orbit."

"What's to stop them waking up? Shoot them." Said Asajj.

"Right o," said Ahsoka, she locked the computer on all the ones within range and fired. Single impacts were sufficient in their sleep mode, so it didn't use up much of their fuel.

"Obi-Wan's moving around a bit, he seems to be in a fight, going atmo," said Asajj.

Ahsoka tried to locate obi-wan, if he's in a fight ... ...

If he's in a fight, he'll be right up close to Anakin.

"There's the building," said Asajj.

They saw Obi Wan and Anakin emerge from it running along one of the shield emitters.

"Judy," announced Ahsoka, "just need them to separate a bit more, there's danger close and there's suicide close."

"What if Anakin kills Obi-Wan?" asked Asajj.

"Then Anakin's next," said Ahsoka, "Yoda's right, there is no Anakin, there is only Vader, Anakin I know wouldn't dice up younglings, what he's been up to is beyond karked."

Asajj nodded.

You don't slice up little younglings. Asajj couldn't believe she used to work for a pair of Sith. She liked killing when she was in the cloud of rage that had enveloped her, but that ... ... Would she have killed younglings?

Asajj kept the ship in its holding pattern, Ahsoka had all turrets locked onto Anakin, they just needed an opportunity.

* * *

Barriss found herself being spun too fast by Sidous's force telekinesis as he leapt up clear of her and Yoda. Yoda leapt after him, Sidious made one more move with Barriss, throwing her out to the wall of the Convocation chamber.

Yoda glanced at her, but he couldn't protect her without taking the pressure off of Sidious.

You don't stop for a man down

He had to hurt this guy.

* * *

Asajj and Ahsoka felt Barriss lose consciousness.

"Hope Yoda gets him," said Asajj.

Anakin and Obi separated sufficiently for Ahsoka's separation.

"Ooop. Firing."

Anakin must have sensed the shots coming because he leapt off the droid he was stood on, but was headed for Obi-Wan's platform, causing Ahsoka to check fire commenting "Shavit!"

She kept watching for an opportunity.

She could also sense Anakin's rage through the force.

"Anakin and I once came here specifically to rescue a couple of younglings," said Ahsoka.

Obi-Wan and Anakin leapt off the raft and continued to fight.

"Don't think Anakin's going to allow himself to separate again," said Ahsoka.

They kept watching as Obi-Wan and Anakin kept fighting on the hillside.

"What would make them separate?" asked Asajj.

Ahsoka thought and then said "do a slow flyby with the repulsors off, use thrusters."

Asajj looked confused for a moment, but went ahead with it, quickly seeing the answer.

All the dust kicked up by the thrusters included not just small particles that would hang in the air for ages, there were also sharp lumps from pulverised aerated lava, this would sting them both and force them to separate.

They hoped.

It worked.

"Firing," announced Ahsoka as she shot at Anakin, forcing him to leap about, trying to stay ahead of the turrets.

Anakin eventually saw where obi-wan was and leapt at him.

The leap was so poorly planned that he was wide open, so what Ahsoka couldn't do, Obi-Wan did. He sliced Anakin's arms and legs off.

Obi Wan then grabbed is comm. And sent "Ahsoka from Obi-wan, receiving, over?"

"Obi wan, Ahsoka, need a lift?"

"I'll walk, Padme needs a look, I'm afraid Anakin attacked her."

"Eh?" Asked Ahsoka. She then said "She's pregnant, and his girlfriend."

"And he's gone Sith, trust me, he's gone," said Asajj as she took them over to the facility sending to Obi-Wan "Obi-Wan from Asajj, moving now."

* * *

"Oh, Ahsoka, it is such a relief to see you," started C3PO.

"Yeah, where's Padme?" asked Ahsoka.

"Inside," said C3PO.

A medical droid was following Ahsoka but struggling to keep up. Ahsoka entered the ship and found Padme on the bed inside the ship.

"Padme?"

"Ahsoka," said Padme, sounding as tired as she looked.

"Obi-Wan told me what happened, I've brought a medical droid for you," said Ahsoka.

The medical droid started using medical sensors to examine Padme.

"What has happened to Ani?" asked Padme.

"He's no longer a threat," said Ahsoka, "Obi-Wan's killed him."

"I mean before," said Padme, "he was killing younglings, how could he do that?"

"I ... Cant' explain that," said Ahsoka,

"I can't explain what's going on with Padme," said the medical droid, "we need to get her to a proper hospital, soon."

"Alright, you stay with her, I'll get us moving." She then got on her comm. And sent "Obi-Wan from Ahsoka, Padme needs a hospital according to the medical droid, I'm going to get us moving."

"Have that, I'm going to be a few more minutes, so, go ahead and take off."

"All from Asajj, dibs on the star fighter."

Ahsoka chuckled, and sent "No contest, out," as she closed the door and got into the cockpit to take off.

It felt like Barriss was waking up, but she felt like she was a bit uncomfortable, but she was alive, so that should mean Sidious is dead.

Job done basically.

"Obi-Wan from Ahsoka, where we going, over?"

"Polis Massa," said Obi-Wan.


	4. 4 - Captivity Sucks

**Okay, earlier I said it gets a bit horrible in here, I probably didn't make myself as clear as perhaps I should have.**

**There are torture scenes that (depending on your sensitivity to violence) could sicken you. Think hard about whether or not you want to continue.**

* * *

Barriss woke up, feeling cold, feeling the hard surface she was resting on, feeling something on her wrists.

They were bound in front of her, but on opening her eyes, she realised they were force suppression cuffs.

She also realised she was in a GAR prison cell.

Well. Not so much GAR any more, that karker Palpatine, or Darth Sidious, has now made the Republic into the Empire. GAE.

Barriss sat up. She was still wearing that disguise of hers, and her head felt like it was going to explode, and it felt like her right ankle was fractured, both skins felt like they had been bruised ...

She had this memory of being spun around and thrown against the side of the Grand Convocation, it's a wonder she didn't end up dead.

Had she ended up dead though, that would have left Yoda's life signs preventing detonation.

So, what was the situation? Was Yoda dead, or Sidious?

If Sidious was dead, did Yoda forget to rescue her, or was he forced to leave?

Or did Yoda still hate her for framing Ahsoka and making the entire council look like mugs?

She still didn't know if they had been successful.

Until Sidious and Mas walked into view outside the force field, lowering it and entering.

"Still alive are you?" asked Barriss.

"Yes, Barriss. You failed. Yoda failed. And now you can do nothing."

Barriss walked around nodding. She then asked "so, what happens when the euphoria of victory wears out and senators and constituents start realising what they've gone and done?"

"They'll comply because they know what's good for them," said Sidious. He then said "By the way, I'd like to thank you for once again entrenching public approval for the Jedi purge, yes, you and Yoda attacking me, and that bomb of yours? It's interesting how all your plans seem to backfire so spectacularly, remember how you meant to destroy my clone army but instead irradiated your master? How you melted her guts and killed her so painfully slowly?"

"Laugh it up, slime ball." Said Barriss, she then added "Sith empires have been defeated in spite of higher numbers of Sith Lords, and you may have reduced the Jedi to a mere handful, but your secret's out now. Remind me, including yourself, how many Sith do you have?" Damn it though, Sidious was right, every time she planned something like that, it seemed to go completely tits and lekku up.

"Do not worry yourself about my survival, you want to worry about yourself, see, this may or may not have escaped your attention, but," Sidious telekinetically slammed Barriss face first into the end wall of her cell, and walked over to her drawing his sabre, slowly closing on her. He pressed the shroud of his sabre into her back just under her ribcage, he continued "You're wearing force suppression cuffs, in an imperial custody suite, guarded by hundreds of clones itching for an excuse to end your life, because do you know how they feel about Kamino? Not to mention the members of their very unit you killed when you were fitting up Ahsoka. ... ... Yes, they want a piece of you," he ground the pointed parts of the shroud against her back, possibly breaking skin, she couldn't tell, all she knew was it hurt, and having this Sith bastard right up next to her but being unable to do the galaxy a favour and end him was doing her nut in.

He then pulled back, dragging the shroud hard up her back next to her spine, if not breaking skin, at the very least bruising it, it followed the contour of every rib, pressing into the nerve bundles emerging from her spines. It was now pointing down in a reverse grip. He then pressed her against the wall by the scruff of his neck as he telekinetically pulled her dress out.

She then heard the sabre light, the heat radiating off of it warming her back. The dress fell against the blade and Sidious cut it the rest of the way to the hem.

He released her neck, Barriss stood still, not wanting to move with her dress open like this. It would be pretty humiliating to be stood in front of this pair of twats in her underwear.

What was even more humiliating was the next thing Sidious did which was pull out her bra strap against the blade and then her knickers, cutting the waist on each side of the crotch.

He stepped back, probably pitching a tent at the view of her arse crack. Barriss remained still, having this weird impression that if she stayed still and silent long enough, they would just go away. That was obviously wishful thinking, but those were her instincts and currently she was shavit out of better ideas.

"No more backtalk Barriss?" asked Sidious.

"What's changed? You're still a Sith Lord," said Barriss. It went against everything she was taught about escaping captivity to challenge the authority of the captor when you're without an escape plan, let alone just got there with no clue what you're going to do for escape aids or methods, but being reduced to Sidious's play thing was burning away in her mind. On the other hand, if Barriss overplayed submission, Sidious would just dial up the abuse faster.

The next thing Sidious did was telekinetically slam her against the other end of the cell, she was now facing out with her dress and bra falling down her arms, exposing her breasts to them. It was really hard to look at the pair of them, she itched all over, tears were filling her sinuses and threatened to spill over, but she also hated the idea of letting him know how badly this was getting to her, so she kept her expression as neutral as possible. Aside from holding into that one piece of dignity (if it can be called that at this stage), it might be useful to see how they behaved around her. Sidious then telekinetically pulled the dress up, her hands following them. He then slowly cut the dress along the sleeves. He looked down at Barriss's breasts as he did, commenting "You know, it's hard to stay focused with such a lovely view. I do hope I don't accidentally cut your fingers off just yet. I want to save doing that for later."

Her pubic mound was fully exposed too. She kept the pubes down to about 5mm for some reason, she couldn't work out why she did it, she just wanted them to look a certain way. Mas could definitely see her labia from where he was, in fact he crouched down for a better view, grinning evilly. Every time those two looked at her or indicated their enjoyment of seeing her naked, under their control, made the itching and nausea worse.

Barriss's hands survived unscathed as the dress finally detached, allowing Barriss to bring her hands down to a more comfortable level. She didn't bother trying to block Mas's view, that would simply make her look more distressed than she looked now.

Sidious then brought the tip of his lightsabre up between her legs and moved it outwards, prompting Barriss to move her left leg up.

Mas moved closer, gazing into her vestibule, now exposed by the tension created by her leg's position.

Sidious moved his sabre further up and out, causing her to straighten her leg so she was doing a standing splits. Mas used one of his forward claws to tickle the edges of her labia. He asked Barriss "Tell me Barriss, do you masturbate?"

"Who doesn't?" asked Barriss.

"Mouthy schuttas who get their clitorises amputated to teach them a lesson, that's who," said Sidious as be brought the blade down to near her crotch, letting her feel the heat radiating into her labia. Barriss couldn't be sure Sidious wouldn't do it. The fact was Sidious had hidden his identity as a Sith lord so well, his style of torture (torturers all had particular styles, that was how cops (were supposed to ) track them down) was almost completely unknown, all she knew now was he was using sexual humiliation on her now.

After letting that point hang, he turned the blade off and handed it to her saying "you're going to kark yourself with my lightsabre."

Barriss wasn't sure whether or not this was some kind of trap, because with this lightsabre, she could destroy these cuffs, shove Sidious back, destroy the forcefield emitters on the door, and escape. Barriss lowered her leg and leant back against the wall, pointing the pommel towards her crotch. She heard Sidious say "Shroud first."

She turned it around. As she did, she had the sabre pointed at the cuffs. She hit the power switch.

Nothing happened.

On the plus side, this meant there wasn't a chance of it lighting inside her, but it also meant she was going to at least kark herself with the lightsabre for their amusement. As she spread her labia and poked the shroud into her vestibule, she could feel some of the points of the shroud digging into her vaginal walls. She continued to push it in, slowly.

Too slowly for Sidious's tastes apparently. He telekinetically rammed it in.

* * *

"Ohhhh, kark," groaned Ahsoka.

"Do you need help?" asked the medical droid.

"No, but Barriss does."

"Barriss?" asked Padme, "What's happening to her?"

Ahsoka, her head resting on one hand, her other hand on her lower abdomen, said "she's being roughed up."

That was upsetting for Padme, but she, Ahsoka, in fact a lot of people known to Ahsoka had been on the wrong end of an ass kicking at times. Padme didn't need to know where Barriss was being roughed up.

What Ahsoka decided to focus on was that Barriss wouldn't be able to hurt if she was dead. ... ... Yeah, that was a good thing ... ... Ahsoka sat on the floor as she felt her blood pressure crash.

"Excuse me, Ahsoka, we're coming up on Polis Massa," said C3PO as he entered the medical area.

"Thanks C3PO," said Ahsoka as she used force telekinesis to help herself stand. She then went up to the bridge.

They dropped out of Hyperspace and Ahsoka sent "Polis Massa from Ahsoka, comm. Check, over."

"Polis Massa receiving."

"Pan pan pan, one cat cresh caus, female human, cause unknown, symptoms, general crash, over."

"Have that, medics will meet you on landing, enter the hanger, take bay 3."

"Ahsoka on approach."

* * *

Barriss wasn't sure if she was allowed to kneel at this point. Sidious was clearly done shoving that sabre hilt that was clearly NOT designed to function as a dildo (contrary to what many a holonet illustration seems to portray) in and out of her (she hoped, force did she hope he was done doing that), he was inspecting it, holding it telekinetically in front of him.

He then moved it towards her face and told her "Lick it clean."

Barriss complied. There was blood mixed with the vaginal secretions, confirming that it had torn her vaginal walls. He rotated it telekinetically as she licked every square millimetre presented and available for her tongue.

Eventually she ran out of parts of the sabre to lick and Sidious retrieved it, inspecting it again.

"I was amused," said Sidious, he then looked to Mas asking "how about you?"

"Yes, she was very entertaining," Mas responded with a nod.

"Best wank off though, given she karked that pimp, the filthy slut," he said as he led off out of the cell. Mas followed him.

Eventually Barriss allowed herself to slide to the floor.

This was those two getting started.

Oh.

And all those clones she had basically declared war on a year ago.

And this pain in her abdomen which felt like it extended well beyond her vagina, seemingly enclosing her whole abdominal sac, the shooting pain was probably going to persist for days, and without her ability to use her force healing abilities.

She realised she was clawing at her left forearm with her right hand, but didn't bother stopping herself. No point holding back the tears either.

She did have to think about how madly she wanted to live vs how badly she wanted to stop these karkers hurting her more, but she also remembered that she can't kill Sidious if she kills herself first. That fact was the only thing she could think of at this point that could possibly get her through what lay ahead of her.

Emphasis on possibly.

* * *

Ahsoka and Asajj stood with Obi-Wan and Yoda as they watched the medical droids work on Padme.

"We need to get Barriss out of there," commented Ahsoka.

"Who's we?" asked Asajj.

"Excuse me?" asked Ahsoka looking up at Asajj, "you can't tell me you didn't feel that."

"Course I felt it," snarled Asajj, "but what are we supposed to do here? She's deep inside an enemy stronghold with Palpatine somewhere inside there too."

"We draw him off while we extract Barriss then," said Ahsoka.

"And how we going to do that?" asked Asajj.

Ahsoka thought.

"A small task, fighting Sidious is not. Help Barriss, you can't," said Yoda.

"Challenge accepted," said Ahsoka.

"Forbid it, I do," said Yoda.

"How you little shavite? Left the order a year ago, remember?" snapped Ahsoka.

Yoda nodded.

Obi-Wan looked thoughtful though. He liked a challenge. "You do have an advantage with Corouscant, it's a city planet with too many concealed levels to effectively police. The problem is you will still need greater numbers to break into the prison, let alone draw Sidious off somewhere else."

"Numbers," mused Asajj. She then said "Right. Ahsoka, you ever been to Dathomir?"

"I have," said Obi-Wan.

"You're probably too straight laced for what I have in mind," said Asajj, she then said to Ahsoka "You, ... hard to tell, I would hope you would trust me on this one."

Ahsoka thinks but says "It gets Barriss out of there, and possibly kills or mains Sidious, ... ... I'll play it by montral."

* * *

"We're here to feed you," said one of a pair of clones that entered the cell.

Barriss looked up. The other one was holding a plate with a cover on it and a blaster.

"We're going to check you for weapons first."

"Where am I going to hide a ... I withdraw the question," Barriss said, realising quickly this was nothing to do with security.

"On your knees, hands behind your head, open your upper jizz hole."

Barriss wished she didn't have to acknowledge he was referring to her mouth, but she needed to get some food inside her. Even before the clone wars, Jedi were expected to come into conflict with all sorts of characters, and may have to survive and escape captivity, so she knew to submit and eat whatever she was given to eat until she could plan and execute an escape, but at the same time, the lack of any shank material, or other things she could craft a tool out of in this cell, and the fact these karkers had years of experience dealing with military trained prisoners of all levels of ability ... ...

The clone illuminated her mouth with a torch, running a gloved finger around her gums, under her tongue, repeating the actions. ...

He then pushed his fingers deep down her throat, making her gag. He didn't need to push his finger into her oesophagus to prove there was nothing concealed there, all it did for him was cut off her airways, forcing her chest and abdominal muscles to twitch as her lungs burned for air.

He then pulled his fingers out and told her "Hands and feet, get that arse up in the air."

Same thing again from the other end. Three fingers went up her cunt, spreading out, aggravating bruises and tears from when Sidious had been raping her with his lightsabre hilt, rubbing against her cervix, and then painfully pushing down on her bladder, again, only point of that was to hurt her.

Two fingers then went up her anus, basically dry, causing Barriss to grunt in pain, as the fingers twisted and spread and felt around.

"Back on your knees."

Barriss changed to the required position.

"Clean this," he offered the fingers that had been up her arse.

She had to do this to get her food. Not hygienic, but what else was there?

She ran her tongue over the contaminated fingers.

A few minutes later he was satisfied with the cleanliness of his glove and told her "Alright, sit down," as he invited the other clone forward who crouched down and lifted the lid off the plate.

It revealed a half litre syringe filled with a clear liquid with a 30cm long tube with a needle on the other end, an antiseptic wipe and a plaster.

At the mention of being fed, her stomach had started preparing to receive food. This wouldn't do anything for that. Nourished: Yes, full: As if.

"Lay back, hands over your head, right foot over my shoulder," said the lead clone as he knelt, picking up the antiseptic wipe while his assistant pushed enough of the fluid forward to prove there was no air in the line.

Femoral artery.

He took his glove off and felt the inside of her thigh until his finger stopped over the return valve.

Femoral vein then.

He wiped the location as his assistant handed him the end of the tube with the needle and stood ready to pop it in.

While they were doing this, Barriss assessed what she could see of their equipment, hoping she could work out what they had that could A: help her, and B: could be stolen by her.

As the needle entered her femoral artery, she realised that she hadn't done a proper assessment of where in the cell she could hide things though, bit stupid, but she was going to be there a while, so, she could do that when they went. Off hand, her best bet might be the retractable sink and toilet. The bed shelf had no mattress on it, air vent grille was welded on, she wasn't confident she could find anywhere capable of concealing anything except her holes that they would go poking around each visit for personal amusement if nothing else (looks like the search could do something after all).

Whatever she did would have to be followed with an escape immediately.

That blaster could be used to shoot off the cuffs, or at least disable the force suppression feature.

The plunger reached the end of the syringe and the lead clone placed the plaster over the needle as he removed it and stood, letting Barriss's foot fall back to the floor.

"One more thing, stand up," said the lead clone as he put his glove back on, his assistant finishing placing everything back on the plate and putting the lid back on.

As Barriss stood, she felt a pounding headache take hold, a cold clammy feeling also presented, and dizziness.

This wasn't some kind of sedative or painkiller that was doing this, whatever they had given her was lowering her blood pressure.

"Barriss Offee, on behalf of all my clone brothers, and especially those in my unit and myself: ... " after a short pause, he executed a right hook, catching her across the left orbital, spinning her around so she landed in a crumpled heap just behind where she had stood.

This on top of her headache.

He started out, and his assistant also turned to head out too.

He then brought the heel of his boot back, catching her across her mouth before following the other clone out.

Barriss didn't bother getting up at this point. Even sitting up brought on the headache.

Barriss had no doubt that, as Sidious had said earlier, this lot had been looking forwards to this.

If they get used to her being a pathetic pile of flesh on the floor, there was a chance she could get her opening, just a matter of time.

...

In which she'd be getting the shavit kicked out of her.

...

This sucks.


	5. 5 - Ninety Percent Preparation

"Err, Hi Palpatine," said Sionver as she entered the office. It was a somewhat smashed up looking office, lightsabre gouges in the walls, furnishings were scorched, the desk had this shadow around it where the floor hadn't been bleached by an intense light source, and the smell in here of burnt fabric, and the smoke wafting down from the Grand Convocation Chamber, this place had this kind of madhouse element to it.

"Sionver, good work on that Zillo beast armour," said Palpatine.

"Thanks. I don't have anything with me on that now though, if I knew-" she started, suddenly thinking she had failed to prepare for the meeting.

"Relax, this is a different job," said Palpatine, "Tell me, what do you know about worms?"

"Worms?" asked Sionver, "errph ... I take it you mean actual worms, not severed lekku or ... " she balked slightly asking "seriously, you haven't been ... ... have you?"

Palpatine couldn't help but chuckle as he said "I seem to have gained a reputation now." He then produced a holocron and plugged it into a holopad which projected an image of a little green orb. From this orb a worm emerged.

"Is that a Geonosian mind worm?" Sionver asked, her voice faint.

"Yes. Your task is to find a way to program these worms so that they can be made loyal to me."

She nodded and asked "do we have any live samples?"

"As many as you need," said Palpatine. That calm, 'pleasant' voice of his, if he wasn't talking about things as karked up as harnessing Geonosian mind worms, if it was something perfectly normal such as "you can have any salad you like," or something like that. But now, that voice with this subject matter just displayed Palatine's absolute lack of any empathy what so ever. This guy was a complete psychopath.

Why is why Sionver's reply was a faint "Thank you. I'll get right on it."

These aren't the kind of people you say no to without having the distance and firepower to keep them from effecting negative consequences on you.

* * *

"Welcome to Dathomir," said Asajj, "my home, many fond memories." She then pointed at a dead body that had been picked mostly clean but still had clothing and bits of flesh on it saying "oh look, one of my dead sisters."

Ahsoka could feel Asajj's pain at being reminded of something bad having happened here. There were also remains fo battle droids and Ahsoka could even see a couple of hover tanks. This was her homeworld, no wonder she went off the separatists.

A woman dressed in something less practical than what a Nabooan queen wore emerged from somewhere ahead and Asajj said "That's Talzin, High mother of the clan. She's helped me in the past, but what I'm about to ask could be ... ... well ... ... "

They continued up to her where she greeted them "Asajj, good to see you. This is your friend?"

"Yes. Ahsoka Tano. I have another friend, but ... "

"But Darth Sidious has her," nodded Talzin, her demeanour was sympathetic, but Ahsoka was a bit concerned about what she knew of this and more importantly, what she might be getting into. "Come, we have much to discuss."

"I did have a specific idea in mind to help with the mission, but I have no idea how much of an ask this would be of you."

"The reanimation spell?" asked Talzin.

"Yes," said Asajj, "is this something that can be replicated on Corouscant?"

"Re-animation spell?" asked Ahsoka.

"Zombies," said Asajj and Talzin simultaneously.

"Ewww," commented Ahsoka. She then asked "Hang on, we're making those on Corouscant?"

"I believe we can," said Talzin, "But I would need to go to Corouscant."

"Wouldn't they be kinda slow and hungry for brains?" asked Ahsoka.

Asajj just glared at Ahsoka as Talzin, with a light chuckle, explained "Zombies are not as certain movies portray. They are remote controlled reanimated cadavers, and they're as fast or faster than a living person of similar build."

"Okay," said Ahsoka.

Talzin picked up how pensive Ahsoka was and asked "does this bother you?"

"A little. But not as much as leaving Barriss in Sidious's custody. Any equipment or consumables needed?"

Talzin replied "I can grab all I need in a minute, how many cadavers will be available for this?"

"There's always a couple of hundred knocking about the lower levels of Corouscant," said Asajj, "there may still be dead Jedi left in the temple."

Ahsoka nodded. She then commented "That could actually be quite funny, if Sidious was fighting Jedi zombies. Revenge of the dead kind of thing."

"Yeah? You up for this then?" Asked Asajj.

"I think I am," said Ahsoka. "Okay, I'm going to do some research. Back in a mo," Ahsoka then got up and left.

* * *

Barriss was feeling like she had gotten the balance between preparation and escaping while she could wrong.

Or there never was an opportunity.

Either way, standing on her left toes to keep from getting strangled by the 6mm cable noose attached to the ceiling was wearing her down, and her hands having been positioned behind the cable, still in the force cuffs that had no length of chain between them, were of no use in taking the pressure off her neck, bringing her hands forward would press against the wire without giving her fingers access.

And she'd have to be strangled to unconsciousness before anyone undid this arrangement she suspected.

So she just rested her cuffs against the back of her head, the rest of her body seemingly offered to anyone who walks in, presented as a gift. Ugh ...

Sidious could, of course, had spent ages using force lighting to torture her, but while that was intense as you like, it lacked a certain ... ...

What was the word Barriss was thinking of?

Well, she could see how the parts of her visible in that mirror over the retractable sink looked. There were bruises on her abdomen and on her chest where some of the clones had punched or kicked her. Typically they walk in, straight up to her, land the blow, and kark off, unceremoniously as if they were taking a piss.

One of them had taken a piss on her. It reached her face, splashed in her eyes, went up her nose, her breasts, belly, her thighs.

And then he punched her square in the face.

Her face now had bruises on bruises. One bruise was squarish from when this clone had walked in with a 2kg lump hammer. After some foreplay consisting of poking and stroking her with the hammer, he wound up and took a massive swing at her.

And stopped about 10cm from her face. When she opened her eyes, he then hit her with the hammer, not as hard as he was threatening to wit that swing, but that wrist flick tap had been hard.

He had then mentioned he was the one she had been torturing on the way to Nar Shaddaa and broke the carpals of her right foot.

So now she couldn't shift her weight onto it.

Then there's this other clone who disregarded/didn't hear the advice Sidious and Mas had apparently adhered to, and raped her up the arse.

The ones that raped her might be useful because the difference of premeditation between hitting someone and raping someone. That level of involvement had led Barriss to try and goad them into unhooking her from the ceiling for a 'less unfair fight,' but that hadn't worked. It was obvious right off the bat what she was trying to do, their responses ranging from ignoring her to punching her every time she uttered a syllable.

Any time she heard anyone approach her, her heart rate spiked.

Stupid reflex. Can't her adrenal system tell she had no freedom of movement to fight?

Of course it can't. It's an adrenal system.

The really scary thing was the feeling of her head swelling every time that noose tightened. It wasn't just that blood was no longer moving in that scared her. It was that blood was no longer moving out of her head either. And that noose was pulling up as well as in, so that could easily cause intracranial bleeding if done hard enough. That wouldn't necessarily be quick and merciful, most likely she'd get a real-time experience of losing her senses and motor functions piece by piece, and if "rescued" by her captors, she'd most likely have persistent if not permanent brain damage severing control of her arms, or her face, she could end up incontinent because as far as her brain's concerned she has no bladder or anus, she could end up deaf or blind in one or both of the relevant sensory organs.

It wasn't the control her tormentors have that was scary, it was the control they didn't have.

She then saw Ahsoka enter.

It took a few seconds for her to process this.

"Get me out of this," whispered Barriss.

Ahsoka looked at her and said "I ... I don't think I should, if you don't stand properly in your dream, you may stop standing properly in real life."

"A ... dream?" Barriss felt like cursing Ahsoka out, but this could drive Ahsoka away. She didn't want to drive off a friend at a time like this.

Ahsoka looked around and asked "Where is this? Corouscant?"

"Probably," said Barriss, "I was unconscious when I woke up here. Sidious had Mas with him, and Sidious mentioned the unit I had killed to fame you were all around here, so it's a good probability. Probably that exact same complex. Centre of his empire, so he should feel secure keeping me here."

"Okay. ... I'm still forming a plan. ... Mas, ... Mas Amedda, the Vice Chancellor?" asked Ahsoka.

"Yeah. Karking tag along kid. I'd love to see the look on his face when someone finally kills Sidious."

Ahsoka looked awkward. Barriss could feel why. Catching sight of Barriss in her current state, bruises, cut lip, she couldn't see what her right foot looked like, this vision probably gave Ahsoka a whiff of that clone's urine all over her. Barriss didn't want Ahsoka to leave either.

"Ahsoka, listen," started Barriss, "I would like to be rescued, but you can't help anyone if you're dead. There are precious few Jedi left in the universe. Sidious, to a point, is in a bubble, he can't stray too far from his cabinet or military council without losing control, you have time on your side,"

"I'm not leaving you there."

"Ahsoka!-"

"I won't rush in," said Ahsoka, "but I'm not leaving you there. I will find a way to get you out. There are precious few Jedi left in the universe, you included."

Barriss nodded and said "use your best judgement. I don't want you to die trying to get me out, but I want to get out of here."

"Okay. ... Force be with you," said Ahsoka. She then disappeared.

Barriss felt some hope take root in her

She had no idea how much time had passed before she felt something hit her forehead.

It kept hitting until she saw a ... something human shaped in a black suit, gloves, body, helmet, cape, the suit had some kind of control panel on the front and the eyes were covered in a glass or other transparent (?) material so dark, she couldn't tell which of the near human species this guy was. The helmet had this shroud going around the back. A triangular grille hissed and clucked like this person was breathing through a pair of diaphragm check valves.

He had been knocking on her forehead like he had been knocking on a door.

"What?" she finally asked.

He lowered his arm and stepped back, showing her a camping stove.

This guy wasn't helping her out, so he was most likely here to hurt her, and if he was holding up a camping stove, he was either going to threaten to use it, let her imagination run away with her.

Or, assuming she wasn't that lucky, and so far reality hadn't shown her a lot of win lately, so why would this guy break that trend?

He turned it on, and approached her, pointing it at her face, letting her feel the heat radiating off the lag-less electric hob.

He lowered it, pointing it up, holding it there in front of her face as he reached between her arm and her head and grabbed some strands of hair.

Poking the ends of the hair into the hob generated the predictable smell of burnt hair.

It didn't catch fire though.

But was that what he was going to do?

He stepped behind her and she felt nothing for seconds. ... or minutes? ... Stupid adrenaline, why couldn't it stop warping her perception of time?

Then she started to feel heat radiating against the back of her left thigh.

* * *

"Oh force," said Ahsoka.

"Yeah," agreed Asajj.

"What?" asked Talzin.

"Someone's using a heat source of some kind on Barriss," said Ahsoka.

"I suppose we should get a move on then," she said as she picked up 4 1m orbs telekinetically.

They led her out, Ahsoka saying "We're going to meet with some friends before we make our way to Corouscant."

* * *

The burns just didn't stop hurting. And every time that black suited bastard touched one of the burns, it set everything off again.

The burns weren't everywhere, but so much of her was covered in 1st and in some places 2nd degree burns, this karker had no shortage of places to touch to hurt her.

He'd been doing that for a while now.

Now he was dragging his fingers up and down some of the burns.

Barriss couldn't remember when it was she had abandoned any attempt to hold back her cries, and she imagined this karker was getting off on it.

"Lord Vader?"

Both looked over to a pair of clones at the doorway, one holding a syringe with a needle on the end of a tube, another with a sterile wipe and a plaster.

"It's her feeding time."

Vader nodded and stepped back.

The lead clone told Vader "I like what you've done with her sir" as he approached Barriss and lifted her right leg, the burns hurting from the contact with his fingers and shoulder as he peeled off the plaster covering the previous feeding site.

Vader?

That sounded familiar.

Oh yeah.

"Anakin Skywalker. ... Aren't you supposed to be dead?" asked Barriss, her voice hoarse.

Vader laughed. He then said "Don't tell Obi-wan. It's a surprise."

She felt the needle poke through her skin and then the inflation of the vessel as the clones started injecting the intravenous "food."

"Ah. What's with the suit?" asked Barriss.

Vader hesitated to answer.

Barriss could only think that Obi-Wan karked him up something awful, so bad that Anakin had to be made so much a cyborg that it just wasn't worth rescuing his body.

"I see," said Barriss as she worked out that his chosen method of torture had something to do with what was done to him. She felt some pity for him.

Vader stormed out.

The needle was removed and the hole dressed in a plaster

"Alright?" asked the lead clone as he slapped her arse.

Right on the burn.

The pair of them slapped her where she had been burned for several seconds before they left, chuckling.

About this time, she felt the headache hit

* * *

"On Kashyyk, there are no longer any live Wookies easily observable, only dead ones. In a statement, Palpatine said that the planet of Kashyyk had defected,"

This was one of many clips the village Home Guard captain had shown Ahsoka.

"Why do we care?" asked Asajj.

"The genocide on Kashyyk is a response to the fact two Wookies helped Yoda escape," said the Home Guard captain.

Along with the home guard captain, there was their IT specialist and Ahsoka's dad, mum and brother. They had bought the star skiff off of the Naboo government 'as a present for Ahsoka,' (really though, this is a front craft for subtle infiltrations.)

"Which means if Palpatine can connect our operation back to Shili ... ... " commented Ahsoka.

"Right," winced Asajj, she then added "Okay, yeah, err ... I wasn't that keen when you first proposed it, so if you're bottling it, I'm not going to oppose you."

"The main thing would be successfully adhering to the first rule of criminal enterprise," said Ahsoka.

"What's that?" asked Ahsoka's brother.

"Don't get caught," chorused everyone on the ship.

"Can you be sure of that?" asked the Home Guard captain.

"Not at this point. We'll need to do some close target recces and assess what's possible," said Ahsoka, "we've got a couple of components of a plan, but we definitely need more, and some idea of how to string them together into a DPA."

"What you got so far?" asked the captain.

"So far ... Zombies, close air support, slice their systems, get Barriss out," said Ahsoka.

"Okay, good start," said the captain, "just need to work on it a bit."

* * *

Sionver looked up from the results on the screen thinking she needed a break.

On the plus side there had been a lot of work done to work out how these worms actually worked.

Well, plus side if you want productivity.

Since the Zillo Beast, Palpatine had been involving her in ever more karked up projects.

Harnessing Geonosian mind worms to co-opt enemy soldiers ... Especially now the Clone Wars have ended, I mean, where the kark was the demand?

To keep a separatist movement occurring again?

Still, she had something to tell Palpatine now, so ...

She downloaded the data onto a data pad and headed off to Palpatine's office.

* * *

"Obi-Wan was working with Barriss Offee," said Vader.

"Yes, that figures. She was definitely working with Yoda," said Palpatine.

"She figured out I had been immolated in that fight. That look of pity is intolerable. I have to make her fear me!" said Darth Vader.

"I believe such an opportunity is upcoming now," said Palpatine, he then looked at his watch, holding up a raised finger saying "Righhhhhht abouuuuuut ... now."

He looked up at the door, Darth Vader followed his gaze.

A few seconds later Palpatine said "well-"

There was a knock on the door.

Palpatine opened the door and Sionver entered.

"Fifteen seconds out," said Palpatine to Vader, Palpatine then asked Sionver "how goes your work?"

"I believe we have a prototype, but given the complexity inherent in this, we're really not going to know until we try it," she hooked her data pad into a holoprojector and placed it on Palpatine's desk as she started going through her data.

* * *

The skiff was parked at the spaceport with Asajj and Talzin concealed within. The IT specialist with Ahsoka's help had sliced into the CCTV systems of the prison and the temple. Everyone else was out shopping.

"Did they have to kill little younglings? Really?" asked the IT specialist, looking disgusted.

"Sith tend to come from the other direction, usually asking 'why can't I kill little younglings'," commented Asajj.

"Lovely," replied the specialist. He then said "one thing to tell you, when you start uploading malware, that kind of thing could get detected by administrators that know what they're doing, and there is a good chance it will be tracked back here. We can gather intelligence, but I'd like to avoid them working out that their system was ever co-opted. Mind you, I hate having to watch what they're doing to your friend. I know we've become a Sith empire now, but surely that is not legal?"

"Terrorists have no rights act, about six months ago," said the home guard captain, disgust oozing out of his voice, "it's legal."

"I still can't believe those are the clones I worked alongside for years. ... I think I know somewhere where we can get a design for an electro-proton bomb," said Ahsoka.

"Oh yeah, I heard about that," said their IT specialist, "is that the kind of thing we can make ourselves?"

Ahsoka thought and said "I honestly don't know."

"And if we break in or have a word with anyone involved with that one," said the home guard captain.

"Yeah," acknowledged Ahsoka.

"What else can affect electronic devices like that?" asked Asajj.

"Any sudden change of magnetic flux above whatever the equipment is designed to withstand," said the IT specialist, "computers and comms and other systems are rated for changes of amounts of Tesla per second, that's hard to meet these days without vaporising a good sized chunk of Corouscant if you use a nuclear bomb."

"Yeah, but we might have something else," said Ahsoka, "the way a lightsabre works, that manipulates electrons to form a blade of light, you get the electron shells without the need for atomic nuclei, right?" She looked at Asajj.

Asajj shrugged saying "I've never built one in all my life."

Ahsoka continued "well, anyway, that's got to hold in it a method by which we can make our electromagnetic pulse."

"Where would you get the crystals from?" asked the captain.

"We got a crystal furnace on our ship," said Ahsoka, "we also have Barriss's notes on shaping crystals, give us a few days, we should be able to get something designed and built. We might need to get more parts though, crystal's the heart of the sabre, but there's a hilt full of parts around it."

"We keep going up and down, we might start drawing suspicion," said the Home guard Captain.

"Okay, we could look around Corouscant for someone and commission them to do it," said Ahsoka, "they'd have to be fine with us rocking up with cash and giving no personal details."

"How reliable that going to be if we're using some backstreet engineer?" asked their IT specialist.

"What about the temple?" asked Asajj, "anything there we might be able to use?"

"Not sure we're getting in there," said Ahsoka, "clones are back to full strength."

"Then I'll do some of what I was going to do anyway." Offered Talzin. She then asked "Is there information on the relevant physics in the temple?"

"Yeah, there's a library."

* * *

A clone entered the cell and looked back out. He then stepped over to Barriss, causing Barriss to tense up, knowing he was going to do something to her.

"I'm getting you out of here," said the clone as he unhooked the noose from the ceiling, "I don't have the key for the cuffs, but we'll sort them out later."

After removing the noose completely, he led her to the door and showed her a crate on a repulsor sled telling her "get in."

Barriss got in as instructed. Clones had defied their programming before, hopefully he had here.

If he was playing some kind of trick, she couldn't think of anything she could do about it.

"Hey, we may not have to rescue her," said the IT specialist.

Everyone crowded around the screen and watched.

Clone looking around before telling Barriss "stay quiet, don't say a thing or get out until I open the crate, okay?"

They watched.

This was lucky.

Bit too lucky.

Better be what it looked like though, if it was, this would mean they wouldn't have to ...

He took the crate through the cafeteria and into a walk in fridge that another clone was holding the door open on. The noises coming out the fridge sounded like a speedway.

He then left the sled there and the clone ad the fridge door slowly closed the door to keep the noise of closing the door. The pair of them seemed to be grinning like evil bastards.

"It's a trick," commented Ahsoka, her tone dripping with disgust.

"I don't know if I can watch this," said the IT guy.

"We have to know what's happening with her," said Ahsoka, "it's a pre-requisite for rescuing her."

"Yeah, sure, but this ... it's ... this is just straight up sick."

"Yeah," said Ahsoka as she returned to working on the power unit for the magnetic pulse bomb, "I can't believe I ever considered those things comrades."

* * *

Barriss was glad she was getting out.

She was getting out, right?

Right, no choice but to trust she was getting out.

Thoughts had been around this track already.

Still, she'd need to watch out for any problems, be prepared to react if this turned out to be a trick.

Same problem as before though.

Karking freezing though, couldn't he have found a warmer place to leave her? Or given her a blanket or something?

* * *

"They're rearranging the tables." Said the IT guy.

Everyone crowded around to watch.

The cafeteria was full of clones. They were indeed rearranging the tables.

It started to look like some kind of catwalk leading to the middle.

Then as they turned off the lights and knelt down, one of them opened the fridge door, and the clone that had removed Barriss from her cell entered the fridge and moved Barriss to the end of one of the tables.

* * *

"Okay, we can't have the light on yet, just follow me, we'll get you stowed away, then we'll be out of here," said the clone.

"Thank you," said Barriss as she stood up, stepping up out of the crate onto the walkway, following his guidance as he held her hands.

She used her hypothermia to excuse sharp hissing breaths, and noted the apparent lack of sound returning to her, the walls had to be some way away. This made her wonder how big this ship was, but she couldn't think of a good way to question anything just yet.

She also noticed a distinct lack of light sources. Ships usually had panels and displays all over the place, and at the very least illuminated walkways, but there was nothing.

"Come on, keep moving, you're almost there now," he said.

This had better not be a trick.

"Alright, wait here." His hands left hers.

She waited.

...

...

Suddenly the lights went on, and before her eyes could adjust, she felt hands on her ankles, another hand on her wrists and another snarled up a fistful of her hair and pulled her forwards, putting painful pressure on her broken right foot, causing a shriek of pain as they brought her to her knees, male humans cheered all around her, and as she was pulled fully onto her hands and knees, her eyes focused enough to see she was surrounded by clones in a cafeteria.

More hands felt her breasts, her legs, her sides and back, aggravating the burned skin, the vile tactile sensations radiating from each touch making her tense and squirm. The hand in her hair pointed her head towards a clone stood at the front of the cafeteria on another table, three stools on the table that each had a large bowl on them. The one on one abuse had been horrible, but she had started to get used to it. This ... ... Being a spectacle in some obscene torture show, having a crowd cheering and reinforcing themselves ...

"Alright, alright, alright, slag and gentlemen, listen up. Here's how this works. I reach into here," he placed his hand over one bowl, "I pick out an activity, then I reach into here," he placed his hand over the next bowl, "I pick out a clone, and then I reach into here," he placed his hand over the third bowl, and said "I pick out a number which will be the number of times this activity the clone will do. Clone will do whatever however many times, then I pick out the next set of instructions, got it?"

"SIR, KARK YES SIR!" replied all the clones.

"Alright, the first activity is ... " he reached into the bowl, stirring the bits of paper and fished one out. Opening it he said "flogging with an electro whip," he looked up and asked "who's got the electro whip?"

Someone answered "I do."

* * *

"Once we rescue Barriss, can we kill all them clones please?" asked the IT specialist.

"If there's time," said the home guard captain.

"We need to make time," said Ahsoka's dad, "they don't get to call themselves soldiers, not if they do ... ... that ... "

"They have it coming, without a doubt, but we're useless if we're dead, and we don't want to get identified doing this," said the home guard captain, "I can think of three billion people who would be especially unimpressed if we get identified doing this."

As the clones got into their game, actions including "punch," "Stamp," "CS Face," "skewer," "carve word 'slut' into skin" (and other derogatory names), "rape" (sometimes specifying 'With Blaster' or 'with fist') the actions sometimes repeated, and the home guard members could do little more than fume, massage knives or guns, fantasising about killing these clones, except Ahsoka, who had to focus as best she could on building the power system for the magnetic pulse bomb.

It hadn't been long before Ahsoka's mum had stormed out, Ahsoka's dad following close behind.

Eventually the game ended (sort of) and Barriss, her cuffed hands tied to the back of her neck, a wet fabric bag over her head, was taken back to her cell, that is, clones in a pair of lines leading back to her cell, shoving her, tripping her up, shaking her breasts, fingerkarking her, then leaving her set up with a pair of nooses toed to opposing walls, so she was forced to kneel, hands left tied to her neck, wet hood over her head.

Then it was pretty much back to normal. Only with her sight obstructed, Barriss couldn't see any of the blows coming. All she'd know is there were footfalls approaching, and silence, because the clones were waiting for her to un-tense before kicking her.

* * *

"And we get on to graph three dash five dash dorn, you can see the feedback replicates this brain function perfectly, so we seem to have consistent feedback," continued Sionver.

Vader and Sidious looked at each other a moment.

How long had they been here listening to her?

Sidious looked at the clock on the screen of his data pad and finally said "I'm ... not going to remember most of this, I'm sorry, but I'm more interested in finding out if this works and can be rolled out, do we have a schedule for practical experimentation?"

"Well, that's where we run into difficulties. Because we're unlikely to get the consent of anyone to allow us to experiment on them with these mind worms without casting a very large net, we're looking at experimenting with non-sentients, but their brains would be sufficiently different that we'd be programming the worms in a completely different language."

Sidious and Vader looked at each other and then said to Sionver "we'll get you your test subjects. There is now a category of sentient we don't need to obtain consent from in order to do these experiments these days you know."

Sionver nodded and eventually said "Okay." She did what she could to force herself to relax. She then asked "what do you have in mind?"

"You, prepare a worm, I'll sort out your test subjects," said Sidious.

* * *

Asajj picked her moment and rolled up onto the landing pad, rushing into the space under the ramp of the skiff.

She then picked her moment to roll up onto the top of the ramp and get inside.

She then pulled the crystal resonator out of the pouch at the front of her webbing.

"Bigger than I thought it would be," said the IT specialist.

"It'll do what we want it to though," said Ahsoka.

"That'll gather the charge and then disperse it in an instant will it?" asked Ahsoka's dad. "What'll that look like then?"

"Imagine if you will, a neutron star suddenly appearing and disappearing around this," said the IT specialist.

"That's mind altering tesla though, innit?" asked Asajj.

"Yeah, we're going to need to be at least 230 metres from it," said Ahsoka.

"Can we put that on the other side of the target from ourselves?" asked Asajj.

"We have a number of options for this," said Ahsoka, "mind, I still need finish up the ... hilt for want of a better word I guess."

"Ughh, not again," said the IT specialist.

"What?" asked Ahsoka.

"They're sticking Barriss in the crate again," said the IT specialist.

"Let me guess," said Ahsoka, "roll it down the stairs? Chuck it in the pool?"

"Shavit. I think they're moving her somewhere else."

Ahsoka ran back to see what he was seeing, everyone now crowding around the screen. Togruta were not the best species to be doing this, but they managed to avoid injuring each other with their montrals.

They were indeed moving the crate Barriss was in to the speeder.

"We need to get a beacon onto that speeder," said Ahsoka, "they take her into hyperspace, we're knackered!"

"I can have the prison ping the speeder's comms at regular intervals, that'll tell us which ship it'll go to, but after that, we will need a tracking device actually on the ship before it jumps to hyperspace."

Asajj got on the comm. sending "Warhorse from Shiny, stand to, we will need a tracking device placed on a ship, details to follow, over."

"Shiny, warhorse, got that, preparing now."

"Alright, I'm following them ... ... They're not going to any of the spaceports ... ... No, they're not moving her off world I don't think, they're going to ... Karking hell, it's only the lab that developed the electro-proton bomb."

"Is it now?" asked Ahsoka.

* * *

It was harder to stay awake curled up in a crate like this.

Nightmares aside, there was the question of how she was supposed to exploit potential opportunities to escape if she was asleep.

But she was way way way too tired to think, let alone do anything at the moment anyway. Also, she wouldn't be able to do anything until someone unlocked her cuffs from the corner of the crate.

At least this time they didn't appear to be trying to convince her she was being rescued.

"Okay, you have three for preliminary use, and one I would like you to reserve for when you are confident everything works correctly," she heard Sidious say.

"Okay," said a female voice, "we would need you around to test the subject's responses to input from you, so if you select a crate and bring it while I prepare the worm."

"Very well," said Sidious.

It was possible they were in a laboratory carrying out some kind of unethical experiment, involving worms of some kind.

The footfalls left.

Worm.

Testing input.

A worm that would co-op-

Barriss was fully awake now. They were modifying Geonosian mind worms, and they were going to test one of them on her. She started pulling at her cuffs. She hadn't done that earlier because she wanted to preserve the function of her hands as long as possible, but she had to ensure that she could stop them either having the worm get inside her if they drop it into the crate or strapping her down if they decide they need to do that to implant the worm.

* * *

"EMP's ready," said Ahsoka, "we need to get to our FAPs now."

"FAP?" asked Talzin.

"Forward attack position," said Ahsoka, "I don't know why they've taken her to a lab, but it could be something irreversible is going to happen."

"But we don't have the layout for the lab," said the IT specialist.

"Some of the Jedi have visited the lab," said Ahsoka, She then directed Talzin to send some of the Jedi zombies to the holocron in the library that held the information, Ahsoka added "it won't be a complete survey, but it's as good as we'll get. We don't know what security measures may or may not exist in there, so full EVA kit."

"Right," said Asajj as she put together her pack.

"How you getting on the ground?" asked the Home Guard captain.

"Force telekinesis," said Ahsoka, "we take off, and Asajj, Talzin and me step off and use force telekinesis to cushion our landing in the lower levels."

* * *

"Good," said Palpatine as the third test subject sawed off his own arm.

Sionver was struggling not to throw up. Yes, this demonstrated how well the worm was working, but the cruelty being demonstrated here ...

"You have done well Sionver. Now, we will do the force active subject." Sidious turned to Darth Vader saying "Vader, fetch the prisoner."

Darth Vader left the lab.

* * *

Barriss felt the crate being moved.

Were they about to stick that worm in her?

Hopefully they'd want to move her out of the crate first, because right here, restrained and cramped as she was, she would be unable to block her nose.

The crate stopped.

A small hatch in the top of the crate opened.

She heard Vader's respirator hissing away.

Barriss tried pulling at her cuffs. She had to protect her nose and mouth, that worm can't be allowed in. This can't happen again.

She pulled hard, feeling the cuffs dig into her wrists.

Even if she dislocated her thumbs, she had to get her hands free.

Vader's gloved hand appeared over the hatch, holding the lid of a jar against the lid. She could see the worm in the jar. The worm was wriggling away.

He then removed the lid and quickly tipped the jar into the opening, the worm fell in, bouncing off of Barriss's shins as fell in, and then the hatch closed.

Barriss kept pulling and pulling, that lock had to give.

The worm came up against her bottom and slithered around between her thigh and her abdomen and started slithering up, between her breasts, causing Barriss to draw a breath in preparation to blow the worm out if it tried entering her nostrils, shaking her head to try to evade it as it arrived at her neck, snaking it's way around her jaw.

She felt it arrive at her right nostril and poke its head in. She tried to blow it out.


	6. 6 - Ten Percent Execution

Ahsoka finished rigging the device with its aero shell.

She set it up to work off a signal from her communicator which would be reading its altitude.

She wasn't confident she could rig it to initiate automatically off of the altimeter.

They were in one of the hangers of a neighbouring building to the lab. It was about 500 metres away, a bit far for even force leap, so they were going to need a speeder to get across. They had bought a speeder bike that honestly would fail it's MOT and was probably stolen, but since they were only using it for this one job, that didn't particularly matter, they would take it close to the lab, fire off the mortar, set off the magnetic pulse, and leap the rest of the way as the bike becomes a brick.

Asajj shook the last of the explosive material out of the last of the fireworks she had bought into the big bag of impulse explosives and inserted the electric igniter, zip tying the bag around the lead. The lead had already been threaded through the touch hole in the base of the mortar they were going to use, so all Asajj had to do was pull at the other end as she placed the propellant bag in the mortar.

Eventually it was ready for the mortar shell.

Ahsoka fed the shell into the mortar, pushing it down as the seal pressed against the sides. Once the shell was as far back as it was going to get, Asajj pulled the igniter wire until the electrical tape thickening lodged into the hole.

After they rigged the mortar to the speeder bike, Ahsoka and Asajj put on their face coverings before putting their EVA suit helmets on.

Asajj then sent "Zulu Mike from Sierra Hotel, we're standing to, what say you?"

"Sierra hotel from Zulu Mike, my legions are at their FAPs."

Asajj nodded, and then sent "Warhorse from Sierra Hotel, say your status, over?"

"Sierra Hotel from Warhorse, ready when needed, over."

"Zulu Mike and Host from Sierra Hotel, our comms may not survive the pulse, so Zulu Mike, we may need you to direct Host, you okay with that?"

"Yes."

"Okay, Zulu Mike, you've got the best view of the battle space, so, you have control," said Asajj and Ahsoka as they got on the speeder bike.

"Have that, Zulu Mike attacking now."

* * *

Sionver was almost in a trance as she stood over the washbasin staring at the mirror.

Her thoughts had been going around and around and around in a perpetual loop.

When she worked on that Zillo Beast, Palpatine seemed to put forth arguments weighting one immorality against another. "I know he's the last of his kind, but we need his armour, we need to be able to make more of it."

Now there was for all intents and purposes, no pretence of morality.

What was her excuse for involving herself in this?

He'd probably kill her if she didn't.

Or stick a worm up her nose and order her to cut off one of her own arms.

He had used one of those worms to co-opt possibly one of the most famous force active people ever. Barriss Offee.

Barriss had featured in one of the reports she had read during her involvement on the project. Barriss had been infested with one of those worms before.

Also, all those bruises, the red splotches over so much of her body, blisters, someone had burned her.

When Barriss stepped out of the crate, there was a massive swelling around her foot, someone had taken a hammer or similar bludgeon to Barriss's foot.

That would be painful to walk on without- actually with the worm too. The report had mentioned that Barriss was fully aware of what was going on around her the whole time, so every time that worm had her body use that foot, Barriss must been feeling the pain from that.

But what can she do in a situation like this?

She'd need to-

The civil defence alarm broke her circular train of thought and she left the toilets to find out what was going on.

Vader and Sidious were walking towards the exit, as was Barriss, now dressed in some armour.

She was also equipped with a pair of lightsabres and was carrying a helmet.

Sionver asked one of her team members "what's happening?"

"Apparently a load of unkillable people are attacking the senate offices, some of them look like rotting corpses, but moving like fully alive Jedi."

Sionver nodded, not sure how this would be possible, she'd have to refer to someone expert in the ways of the force.

* * *

"Sierra Hotel from Zulu Mike, in your own time, go."

"Thank you," said Asajj as she set off, telling Ahsoka "Alright, standby standby ... " they built up the speed they needed and Asajj eventually said "Go."

Ahsoka fired the mortar and watched the altitude figures climb, eventually she said "Firing now." She and Asajj leapt up off the bike before Ahsoka sent the fire command. As predicted the bike lost all its power and fell like a brick and their audio comms conked out.

Their lightsabres were built like a durasteel shavit house, hopefully they'd still function. Otherwise, they'd be using high explosives at every door and slug throwers on every enemy combatant. They had 10 13 round clips each for their blowback operated pistols. Almost NO ONE EVER made these AT ALL anymore, this shavit was barely more advanced than a bow and arrow. Of course a bow and arrow don't need electricity, and neither did a percussion cap full of sodium Azide, nor did the cyclotrimethanetrinitromene and hexnitrobenzine propellant. Talzin had some of her zombies make the guns and their rounds using the temple workshops.

Their sabres lit up the instant they pressed the button though, so that was fine.

They entered the lab and found a stairwell.

They had worked out they would go to the floors on which the lab was situated first.

They found one of the floors. It had a variety of workstations, various devices and set-ups all over the place. Asajj stayed at the stairwell while Ahsoka sought out rooms in which Barriss could be hidden.

There was nothing of interest in there.

Onto the next floor.

Ahsoka returned to the stairwell, taking point as she and Asajj bounced off the walls to the next floor.

Again, nothing.

They left this floor and went up to the next floor.

This was taking too long.

They started searching through the next floor until Ahsoka found a tray full of jars.

"Karking hell," commented Ahsoka as she recognised the Geonosian mind worms wriggling away inside the jars.

Ahsoka sliced across through the jars, killing the mind worms.

She told Asajj "we could have a problem. This lab had Geonosian mind worms."

"And what are those?" asked Asajj.

"Worms that crawl up your nose and take control of you, happened to Barriss once, and I'm now thinking it's happened again."

"Didn't the Republic depopulate Geonosis a couple of years back?" asked Asajj.

"This lab could have been reprogramming the worms to serve the new order," said Ahsoka as she bounced up to the next floor.

"How long could that take?"asked Asajj as she followed Ahsoka.

They found a female Bivall in a lab coat rigging some pyrotechnic grenade fuses (meaning they would not use any electronic parts and should function just fine following the magnetic pulse) to some insulated bottles with wisps of some kind of vapour coming out of them.

She asked them "you're not Sith, right?"

Ahsoka asked "does Barriss have a mind worm up her nose?"

"Yes."

"Okay, where is she?"

"She left with Sidious and Vader."

"Shavit!" commented Ahsoka. She then started picking up the devices the woman had been making, handing some over to Asajj saying "Load up, hypothermia will knock out the worm and restore control to the victim.

"Won't this annoy Palpatine a little? Helping us rescue Barriss?" asked Asajj as she loaded up.

"Only if he finds out," said the woman as Ahsoka and Asajj loaded the last freeze grenade onto their suits.

"Okay, force be with you," said Ahsoka as she led out.

Without their comms systems, they would need to use a public terminal. Practical, but insecure. It would also pin them down for the duration of the communication,

Three flights of stairs down Ahsoka stopped saying "ah kark this," and cut a hole in the wall with her lightsabre and leapt out of the building, Asajj followed her.

When they got to street level, they looked around. They noticed the mangled speeder bike.

They had to find something to get them to the senate offices.

* * *

"I know you saved my life, but I'm starting to wonder if I chose wisely with you," commented Sidious as he and Barriss stood over Vader.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'll try choosing more wisely next time I'm shopping for cybernetic limbs- Oh wait, that was you, wasn't it?" replied Vader.

A clone came up to them and sent "control from 13148, need an ambulance, my location," he then asked "were you attacked? Should we get reinforcements in?"

"Yes, but Barriss and I will handle it. You fix up my apprentice," replied Sidious. He and Barriss then lit their sabres and ran off to the lab.

* * *

Ahsoka and Asajj were looking out the window then they saw two pairs of lightsabres running to the lab.

"That's them," said Ahsoka, she then told the driver "change of plan, get us back to the lab."

"If you say so," said the driver.

Ahsoka fished out a fistful of credits and dropped it in the forwards passenger seat saying "Get us right over those two with the lightsabres."

"I need to know you've paid the correct amount before I can let you out," said the driver as he flew them over.

Ahsoka fished out another fistful as Asajj lit her sabres to cut through the lock and hinges, clearing her and Ahsoka's path out of the cab.

Ahsoka pulled a couple of nitrogen bombs and armed them, throwing them at the one they thought was Barriss as they landed over them.

The nitrogen sprayed everything as Barriss and Sidious engaged Ahsoka and Asajj.

Sidious leapt out of the mist as did Barriss, but Barriss was starting to have problems with her footing. Ahsoka went for Barriss, telekinetically lifting two more nitrogen grenades from her suit.

Barriss, or the worm in control of Barriss, used Barriss's soresu mastery to hold off against Ahsoka as she hoped to regain some kind of initiative, but then Ahsoka sliced through the nitrogen bottles during a leap over Barriss.

This time the nitrogen landed right on Barriss's head. With Ahsoka right up close and fighting Barriss, the worm was too focused on holding off Ahsoka.

Then Barriss collapsed.

Ahsoka located Sidious and Asajj. Sidious looked her way.

"Right," said Ahsoka as she telekinetically picked up Barriss and draped her over her shoulders as she ran off.

They hadn't been in contact with Talzin since they initiated their attack on the lab, so Ahsoka could only hope that Talzin had help moving on them.

She couldn't pay any attention to what was going on behind her, stopping or slowing to look behind would get Sidious closer to her, and Sidious had repelled Barriss and Yoda together, all she could do is keep running. Ahsoka tried applying force telekinesis around the corner that connected Barriss's nostrils to her nasal cavity. Got to get that worm out before it wakes up.

If that worm wakes up while Ahsoka was carrying Barriss ...

That had SO better not karking happen.

She heard something different to the overflying speeders. It was the Eta-2 they had ... how shall we say? ... stole off of Anakin, it fired a burst of blaster fire and continued on.

Ahsoka kept running for another half minute before looking behind her.

There was no sight or sound of Asajj or Sidious behind them.

Ahsoka dropped Barriss onto the floor and unscrewed the lid of one of the bottles, splashing some more nitrogen onto Barriss's face, hoping to keep the worm out.

She then pulled some tweezers out of her suit's webbing and started fishing around Barriss's nasal cavity.

* * *

Asajj had to balance between drawing Sidious away from Ahsoka and keeping Sidious interested in her. If it got too obvious she was a distraction, he would break contact with her and go after Ahsoka.

The Eta-2 came by occasionally and strafed their position, forcing them to jump ... well, anywhere, really

Asajj remembered that Luminara had described her Makashi skills as sloppy, but they seemed good enough to keep Sidious from hurting her for the moment. Asajj was keenly aware of what a bad idea this was on her part, this karker had kicked Yoda and Barriss's arse together in one sitting and Barriss had routinely kicked Asajj's arse in exercises and when Barriss had been trying to fit up Ahsoka.

But this as where she was now, so if she lived, she lived, if she didn't ... Asajj just had to keep at it.

She had no idea of where Ahsoka was, all she knew was she saw Ahsoka running away wearing Barriss as a scarf.

If Ahsoka couldn't get that worm out before it woke up, they would be rather deeply in the poo.

Another spacecraft approached.

This was Warhorse.

A reassuring stream of firepower chased off Sidious, and the back door opened.

Asajj leapt up on board.

Ahsoka and her mum were working on resuscitating Barriss, whose chest armour and helmet had been removed, exposing a ridiculous number of bruises, blisters, and degrading labels carved into Barriss's skin. Ahsoka doing the compressions, her mum doing the breaths.

Asajj watched them work.

Asajj kept the thought that they might as well have strafed the lab as she watched, the ship started manoeuvring away, trying to stay out of reach of Sidious.

"Warhorse, wasp, Have Zulu Mike, returning to you."

"Have that, taking speed way one eight five east."

"Wasp copies one eight five east."

"Read back correct, see you soon."

Asajj checked the position of Barriss, Ahsoka and Ahsoka's mum, they had plenty of space for the Eta-2.

Asajj checked her watch.

She didn't have a good idea of how long they had been trying to resuscitate Barriss, so she genuinely had no idea if they hadn't given it a fair whack or if she was beyond saving.

The back door opened and wasp entered, landing. Its pilot, the Home guard Captain, and its passenger, Clan Mother Talzin, cramped up in a cockpit built for one.

"Err, bandit bandit, and it's a big one," said Ahsoka's brother.

Asajj looked at the console. She then went to the pilot's station with Ahsoka's dad in it and said "you're not force active, are you?"

"Nope," and set the autopilot, stepping out for Asajj to take his place.

"Right then, off we kark," announced Asajj as she took them into a steep climb.

The hyperdrive may not have been enhanced particularly, but the sub light systems were top notch, so Asajj was fully able to stay ahead of the streams of blaster fire coming from the destroyer now having a go at them.

Eventually Asajj felt she had sufficient altitude to take them into hyperspace. They would meet the skiff just outside the Shili system.

Asajj left the ship in the hands of the autopilot as she got out of her seat to check on how they were doing with Barriss.

"Little too much nitrogen there?" asked Ahsoka's dad.

"Looks like," said Ahsoka between sets of compressions.

Barriss kept laying there.

Asajj checked her watch again.

Three minutes.

Asajj was no medical expert, but there was no way Barriss was saveable now, was she?

But then Asajj was no medical expert.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"

Ahsokas mum blew two more breaths into Barriss. Asajj saw one of Barriss's arms move.

Ahsoka applied compressions counting "1, 2, 3-" Ahsoka noticed the movement, Barriss's arms were around Ahsoka's. "Barriss, can you hear me? You're safe now."

"The worm?" wheezed Barriss.

Ahsoka lifted one of her gloves, she had removed them to check Barriss's carotid valve. There was a green smear with worm guts on it. Ahsoka confirmed "dead. Also, far as we can tell, no damage has occurred to the ship."

Barriss nodded and lay back. Bringing her knees up, she started coughing.

Ahsoka and her mum kept their hands around Barriss's head to keep her from banging it against the floor.

"Aren't you glad me sister's too much of a doormat to care you framed her?" asked Ahsoka's brother, who had left the weapons console.

Ahsoka's dad slapped him across the montrals.

Barriss was starting to transition from coughing to crying, at which point Ahsoka and her mum brought Barriss into a hug.


	7. 7 - Element Zero

"How did Barriss's minions know they needed to freeze the worm?" asked Sidious.

"Did your purge get every Jedi?" asked Sionver.

"Probably not," said Sidious.

"That electromagnetic pulse deleted all the data we had on Geonosian mind worms, we do have data caches that had been updated to the point before we started the mind worm project, would you like us start again?" asked Sionver.

"Yes, restart your research," said Sidious.

"We also have another problem, the people who broke into the laboratory killed all our mind worms," said Sionver.

"I'll get you some more mind worms," said Sidious.

"Thanks. I'll get the lab ready," said Sionver before she left.

This was an atrocious business to be in, but where else could she sabotage this project?

The test subjects had been taken to a nearby hospital and their limbs had been reattached.

By the Force this whole thing is messed up. All she could do was look for opportunities to subvert the project in some way.

She almost ran into a blue Duros in leather clothes wearing a wide brim hat. "Ooh, excuse me," she said as she stepped aside and walked on.

"Consider yourself excused," said Cad, as he leered at her before continuing into Sidious's office, pointing behind him with his thumb asking "that a scientist or a stripper?"

"Sophisticated as ever I see," said Sidious, "There's two jobs now, apparently we're out of mind worms, that's another reason added to why I want the first job done, which is find and bring to me the people that attacked the laboratory she works for," as he activated a holovid, showing the two people he had fought, the two ships that had apparently interfered in favour of the two individuals. Cad caught a look at Barriss's face and made the connection, but kept watching. One curiosity was that the lightsabres were white bladed, that was odd. Usually there was a colour, red, yellow, green, blue, one Jedi even had a pink sabre. Thing that gives sabres their colours is presumably a dopant in the crystal. So did these crystals have no dopant? Best explanation for that was that the crystals were synthetic and they couldn't be arsed to play around with dpoants.

"Where did these people get an Eta-2?"

Sidious and Vader looked at each other. Sidious eventually said "I'm going to say 'stole it' and leave it at that."

"Right," said Cad, not about to push them on what it was. He looked at the other craft. "That other craft looks familiar somehow. ... "

"Do you think you can make a start on this then?"

"I believe I can," said Cad, "you want the worms or the mysterious enemies first?"

"Whichever you think you can get done fastest, do that first, if that's the worms, then get that out the way," said Sidious.

"Very well," said Cad, "the mind worms, same fee again, what are you offering for the other one?"

"Two million per LIVE prisoner, I want a word with them."

"Okey dokey. Anything else?"

"That's it," said Sidious, but then Sidious asked "you heard me say live, as in alive, right?"

"Yeah, yeah," said Cad as he left.

People specifying 'alive' annoyed him. Especially Sidious, what kind of Sith lord wants people to be taken alive?

Although, torturing a corpse was no fun, so ... ... Alright, fair point.

Still ...

Barriss Offee. Cad knew of her from a long standing bounty on her. Barriss had pissed off every loan shark and every Hutt in whose territory the loan sharks operated in when buying all those DSDU rounds and everything else she was going to use in her attempt to blow up Kamino.

There was a certain amount of awe to be held in such a plot. Just a pity her plot was de-railed by, of all people, her Jedi master Luminara Unduli.

Cad thought pity, on account that making a star go boom would have been epic, but Sidious was probably pretty glad considering it was his army that was being made there.

He did think about the two individuals that had apparently knocked out Barriss and made off with her. One was human shaped, so hard to know where to start there, but the other, the EVA suit was designed around something shaped like a teenaged Togruta.

Now, what Togrutas had Barriss been associated with?

There were several in the Jedi Order, the most prominent was Ahsoka Tano, who was the right size and shape for this one, but Barriss had fitted her up for all those murder, terrorism and other crimes, so why the kark would Ahsoka help Barriss?

Or perhaps Ahsoka had captured Barriss to hurt her?

Or Ahsoka had taken that famous Jedi philosophy of forgiveness a bit far and actually forgiven Barriss?

This was going to take a while to find the answers for, so best get those worms first, done it before, dead easy, he'd taken more complicated pisses than this.

* * *

"Oww," commented Barriss as the boot slid off her broken foot. The injury was severely aggravated by the fight.

"Oh dear," commented the medical droid, "how long were you walking on that?"

"Half a minute. Probably. Think it was about ten minutes running on it, half a minute fighting on it," said Barriss, "those mind worms are evil, just karking evil. And those clones aren't much better either."

"Any other injuries?" asked the droid.

"Errph, bruises, burns, might be an idea to check my brain for clots and distended vessels ... Errr ... ... " Barriss then said something too quick for three of the people standing around her, on account of them not being Togruta.

"I did not understand that last one," said the droid.

"Emergency contraception," said the Shili Homeguard members.

"Barriss, we sliced the VPN between the prison and the chancellor's office, so ... " said Ahsoka

"Of course," said Barriss with a blush. She then asked "can I have some emergency contraception please?"

The medical droid put enough clues together to ask "were you raped?"

"Yes," admitted Barriss.

"There is no shame in that," said the droid.

"Still sucks," said Barriss.

"The only person at fault is the person who raped you," continued the droid.

"Thank you, I know," said Barriss, irritation creeping in.

"You are not a slut, or a hoe, whatever they call you,-" started the droid.

"You can shut up any time now, thank you," said Barriss, she then asked "when was your sex crime victim add on last updated?"

This exchange was somewhat funny to everyone in the room. It shouldn't be, considering, well, rape, but ...

"I am still equipped with the original add on, I could update my files if you wish."

"Forget it, we're not going to use it," said Barriss, "stick to the physical stuff, I'll work through the mental stuff."

"Are you sure?" asked the droid.

"I'm a trained force healer, I mean ... how hard can it be?"

* * *

Finally Barriss was in a bacta tank healing away. Getting that armour off had been an experience to forget (if possible), blisters had popped, some of the wounds had been opened when it went on, so removing the armour had opened the wounds yet again, it was like watching that surveillance footage, only right up close and personal, and having Barriss naked in a room full of people seemed awkward for all these people given Barriss had probably had enough of people seeing her naked for a lifetime, but where the kark else were they going to go?

But finally she was in the tank and healing nicely.

Ahsoka's mother asked Ahsoka and Asajj "Ahsoka, Asajj, have you three ever had to help someone through recovery from prolonged trauma before?"

Ahsoka and Asajj looked at each other, shrugged and said "No."

"Everyone on Shili has been in the home guard for a year and a half now, but that hasn't made us weird or hard cases or anything, so I suspect what's true for us is true for you three too, loathe as you three are to admit it, and especially in the circles I suspect but not going to ask about that you associate in, what those clones did to her will be hard to come out of, she will have moments when things will get too much."

"Nightmares?" asked Ahsoka.

"That's one aspect. There's other things, any smell or touch or ... there will be things that will unexpectedly take Barriss right back to that cell, she could get violent, or could collapse into a jabbering heap, now, having gone through all the trouble of rescuing her, I would hope you'll want to protect your investment, right?"

"We're not shrinks," commented Asajj, "and we can't bring one on board."

"We'll have to do," said Ahsoka, she then said "we're going to transfer to the skiff and return to Shili then, make sure our alibis are straight and believed, you going to be okay with her alone for a couple of days?"

"Sure. Got to get Talzin home anyway, meet you back here then," said Asajj.

"Okay."

Everyone else was already in their EVA suits. Ahsoka got hers on and made her way across.

It was after Talzin alighted when the medical droid brought Barriss out of the Bacta tank.

Barriss looked in a mirror and noted all the burns seemed to have healed, but had left permanent scars where the skin had blistered, where the degrading words had been carved into her skin, including on her neck.

Was she ever glad she didn't get out much anyway. Still though, those scars evidently weren't going away. There was a weird triumph though. The fact she had been spot on when she called the clone army a trap. For the good that did mind.

Barriss dried off and got into her underwear, and then into some of her winter clothes, and made her way to the bridge.

"Any problems?" asked Barriss as she leaned against the pilot's seat.

"None," said Asajj. Asajj then asked "what about Sidious? Urgent priority or shelve it?"

After a derisory hiss, Barriss said "Karking shelve it. Not karking going after him without an army behind me."

"Talzin made a zombie army, I'm sure she can do it again," suggested Asajj.

Barriss considered it briefly but then said "Nah."

"Okay. ... Ahsoka's mum talked to us about post traumatic stress disorder, she seemed to be talking from experience-"

"Yeah, Zygerrians enslaved her," said Barriss.

"Eh? I thought that was Kiros."

"This one was more subtle, recruitment agency scam, I was in a force dream with Ahsoka when Ahsoka became aware of it," said Barriss, "I just hope I don't end up doing something epic stupid such as stepping outside without an EVA suit."

"We'll help you. You're not alone Barriss."

"Okay. I just hope I'm actually out this time."

Asajj looked back at Barriss and eventually asked "What?"

"My brain knows I'm out, but at the same time, I know I wanted desperately to be out of there ... ... It's just one of the symptoms, you get tortured like that for that long, and especially that stunt where they had that clone pretend to help me ... ... I know what sort of symptoms I'm going to experience, but pain is pain, and mental illness is mental illness. ... " Barriss eventually went back.

Asajj was somewhat bemused by Barriss's attitude to her torture. It made sense on the level that if you had the expertise to do something yourself, you do it yourself to save on labour, why spend money that could be spent on something you need for survival on effort you can supply yourself?

There had always been a certain air of arrogance about Barriss though. And this was continuing. Good sign ... possibly ...

Who knows though? Barriss said 'expect crazy.'

* * *

"No signs of imperial interest in our village," said the home guard captain.

"Thank kark for that," said Ahsoka, "we did end up turning it into an immediate action there."

"It took way too long as things stood," said Ahsoka's dad.

"We have a massive problem with them karking mind worms though," said Ahsoka, "what's to stop Sidious getting more?"

"Where do those things come from anyway?" asked Ahsoka's dad.

"Geonosis," said Ahsoka.

"Ugh, heard about that one. So nasty, the Republic had to do it twice."

"Well, now we're doing it," said Ahsoka, "those worms are a strategic threat to any resistance movement that starts up, Sidious can't be allowed to get his hands on them again."

"What are you thinking of doing to make those worms go away?" asked Asoka's dad.

Ahsoka mused "I hope NOT crawling around the catacombs manually finding and slicing the worms."

"Nuke 'em?" asked Ahsoka's dad.

"Not sure where we'd get the fissionable material from," said Ahsoka. "I'll talk with Barriss and Asajj when they get back from Dathomir."

* * *

Barriss grinned almost maniacally. "Kark yeah I'm in."

"Good," commented Ahsoka, "can we afford a karkload of transuranic elements for this?"

"Probably not," said Barriss, "I have a different idea anyway."

"You always do," commented Ahsoka, "what you thinking?"

"Neutron bomb," said Barriss.

Ahsoka and Asajj both looked at Barriss not quite understanding. Ahsoka eventually asked "wouldn't that need the transuranic elements we specifically ruled out getting?"

"Nope," said Barriss, "I want to use an array of tractor beams to compress matter into neutronium. I then want to carry the neutronium down to Geonosis by remote, and release the neutronium so that it chucks out several tons of neutrons in all directions."

"Several tons of neutrons?" asked Ahsoka, "how much space is that going to take up?"

"Erm, very little. Your basic neutron star weighs several hundred suns, and typically fits within the length of a large destroyer," replies Barriss.

Ahsoka and Asajj both nod thinking 'duh.' Karking elementary school level astrophysics. Ahsoka then asked "what's the plan then?"

"There's a load of rocks floating around Geonosis, a lot of them will be transition metals at or greater atomic numbers than iron, so we squish those into yet heavier elements, that should be endothermic," said Barriss.

"Okay, we squish those and drop them onto our targets then," said Ahsoka.

"That's going to eat a lot of power," said Asajj, "and it sounds like the tractor beam emitters won't be coming back off the job. Unless you like having two heads."

"They'll be vaporised," said Barriss, "neutrons have a half life of ten minutes."

"And this explosion will project the remaining neutrons through the surrounding rocks, a large portion of those neutrons will be captured and make the rocks radioactive," commented Asajj. "You never think small, do you Barriss?"

"That's my problem though," said Barriss. "My plan to blow up the Kamino system, I irradiate my master instead, my plan to kill Palpatine with an ECG fused bomb, blows up the grand convocation, doesn't even touch Sidious, further entrenches his popularity."

"It won't always work," said Ahsoka, "no reason to give up."

"Yeah, I mean, I've had karking thousands of jobs go wrong," said Asajj, she then noted "Although most of those were in opposition to your side at the time, so ... ... "

"I know," said Barriss, "right, I'm going to start working out what we need, no sense buying anything until we have an idea what we need. Those worms come from one location, but there's also a chance these things are stored or being bred elsewhere on Geonosis."

"We would need to explore Geonosis to find all the sites then," said Ahsoka, "that could take a while."

"Unless we get the Shili Home Guard to help us," said Asajj.

"They come from families that might not appreciate being in a foreign expedition where they can't reasonably expect to be concealed," said Ahsoka, "I could ask, but I'd like to see what we can come up with first."

Barriss thought and eventually said "could go further than neutronium, we could make a black hole and drop that into Geonosis."

"Okay, that would probably eat the planet, but how long would that take to work?" asked Ahsoka.

"Too long," said Barriss, "for one thing, we'd need to make the thing in one go, because below a certain mass, the black hole would evaporate, then there's the inefficiency of it's ingestion of the planet, it would only eat matter in or close enough to it's path to be drawn in, we'd be looking at weeks before we see a significant effect."

"More than enough time for the Geonosians to pack up their worms and kark off somewhere else," commented Asajj.

"Yeah, thinking about it, how many of these sites can Palpatine know of?" asked Barriss.

"There's the one we know of ... ... " mused Ahsoka. She then worked out "The Geonosians wouldn't exactly be in love with Sidious after he essentially knifed the Separatist leaders in the back now would they?"

"No," said Barriss, a maniacal grin on her face, "They won't."

"One bomb then," said Asajj.

* * *

Cad landed on Geonosia near those catacombs again.

He may have taken more complicated pisses, but this job was still a bit scary. Even if his species didn't have noses, he still didn't like the idea of being around these things.

Still, credits are credits. He set the passive scanners on his ship to alert him if a threat materialises and set off down the catacombs.

* * *

"Okay, guess this'll have to do then," said Ahsoka as she paid the merchant and returned to the skiff with her purchase.

"Ahsoka," greeted a familiar sounding voice.

Ahsoka turned and greeted her acquaintance and occasional co-worker "Latts. How you doing?"

"Alright. You buying more shavit for your friend?"

"Yeah. She loves shavit," commented Ahsoka.

"Who is she again?" asked Latts.

"I told you, I can't tell you, you know that," said Ahsoka.

"Won't you even tell me what all those tractor beam emitters are for?" asked Latts.

"Ah. That I can tell you," said Ahsoka.

With Latts in rapt attention Ahsoka said "you see, you use a tractor beam to pull to push something, and that's what we intend to use them for. See you around."

"Force, you're insufferable," commented Latts with an eyeroll, she then headed off saying "see you around then."

As Ahsoka entered the Skiff, she found Asajj in the middle of assessing the force field emitters she had bought.

"Just had Latts asking me about our secret friend again," said Ahsoka.

"Yeah, and Dengar was all over me," said Asajj. "Think he's in love with me."

"Aww," commented Ahsoka, she then asked "feel anything for him, or ... ?"

"Not really, I mean, he's not unappealing, but ... What about you? Any men, or even, women, draw your clit to attention?"

"No women, but I do have this thing for Lux Bonteri. Not exactly practical for me to pursue him mind, and I can't think where I'd fit a boyfriend in my life."

"Oh, well, one way is you lay him down face up, arms and legs around him, and sort of feel for his prick with your crotch until it gets seated, and-"

"Yeah, thanks," said Ahsoka, "we can barely see each other, we're sure as kark not going to get around to karking are we?" as Ahsoka picked up a sensor and started checking over her purchase.

"Well, you could always have the empty sex without the complicated soap opera relationship shavite," suggested Asajj, "whenever wanking don't do it, there's this brothel on this world that does boys of all sorts of species, do everything asked of them, but usually I just get a straight up kark."

Ahsoka was starting to seriously think of doing this. Eventually she said "Hmm, probably just stick to wanking for the time being, aside from that, something about Tatooine just makes me want to, just, not get naked here, let alone in front of someone, you know?"

Asajj nodded and said "Okay. Well, all of mine check out for function, just need to see if these things are up to the magnetic fluctuations that making neutronium causes."

"Yeah. Really on the edge of our financial capabilities here," commented Ahsoka as she continued her checks, "this'll have to work first time."

* * *

"Why do you think Ahsoka and Asajj are so tight lipped about their friend?" asked Latts.

"Some kind of sense of honour perhaps?" asked Dengar, "it could also be someone they know are wanted but is somehow useful to them."

"And if it's the latter?" asked Latts.

"Better see where they go then," said Dengar.

"Already set up," said Latts as she pulled a datapad that had a plan view of their immediate surroundings with a line connecting from the centre (their location) to a red dot (Ahsoka's Skiff).

Dengar had been pulling out his own datapad which was running the same app linked to the tracking device he had planted. "Good thinking," said Dengar. "Of course it'll probably ruin any chances I have getting something going with Asajj."

Latts looked at Dengar critically asking "you're really in love with her, aren't you?"

"Well ... yeah, I am ... Still, profit before pleasure, eh?"

* * *

Barriss went through her unarmed combat moves. Very very very little else to do up here most of the time.

It was easy to lose herself in this.

What she wasn't expecting was to suddenly have a load of hands grab her and force her to the floor face down, arms and legs spread. She looked up as far as she could, the clone troopers from that prison.

"The activity," Barriss heard one in front of her say, he was holding up a slip of paper, "rape her with a lightsabre hilt."

She felt a pair of fingers spread her labia and the hard edges of a lightsabre shroud prodded her vestibule.

The hands were replaced with some kind of fabric as she managed to break free of their grasp, but this fabric was going to trip her up unless she could shed it fast, so she roller on her back and pulled her legs up, pitching back and then she got clear, needing to get a view of them before she could engage them.

She tried to find them.

They weren't there.

They never were.

Blinking several times revealed this crust along her eyelids.

Stupid karking nightmares.

But she needed sleep to function. Lack of sleep makes for lack of intellect, lack of situational awareness, and general lack of being much smarter than a B1 Battledroid.

Kark did she not need this shavit.

Barriss grabbed her blanket and carried it back to her mattress, spreading it out.

"Warhorse from swift justice, comm. Check."

Barriss went to the nearest comm. Point and replied "Swift Justice, Warhorse, say your status, over."

"Got the parts, all functional, ready to bring them over, once transfer is complete, should we get on our way?"

"Yeah, opening the door now, standby to get moving," said Barriss.

It would probably be Asajj that could being the parts. Ahsoka had this new ship that she was in love with. Barriss understood this. She loved this ship, she had built it up, and it had been good for her.

Asajj entered through the force field with the tractor beam emitters, power cells, and the shield generator that would protect the system during atmospheric entry.

They got to work.

* * *

"The middle of nowhere," commented Latts.

"Salvage possibly?" asked Dengar.

"To explain the tractor beam emitters?" asked Latts, she then said "you'd still need the engines to match the force of the beam emitters."

"Could be something big and fragile, that needs support at multiple points to prevent failure strain occurring," commented Dengar.

"They just love to be a mystery, don't they?" asked Latts.

"Yeah," said Dengar, "Oh, hang on, they're moving."

They followed the signa.

"Back to Tatoo," commented Dengar, "Ohann?"

They watched as the signal stopped right close to Ohann.

Eventually they dropped out of hyperspace into orbit around Ohann, trying to acquire the skiff.

It was right close to the atmosphere if not in it.

The signal died.

Eventually Dengar commented "Shavit. ... "

Latts then asked "Reckon they're dead?"

Dengar commented "if they are, that wreckage is going down and staying down. We won't know they're dead if they are and we won't know they're not dead until they next make an appearance."

* * *

"This is going to use up so much fuel, so be slow and efficient," said Barriss as they started gathering the material they would compress.

"Got that," said Ahsoka.

They would build up as many small rocks as possible before trying to make their neutronium charge. That way they wouldn't be running the tractor beams for any longer than necessary.

The process of gathering the rocks took several hours.

Barriss mentally reviewed the construction of the bomb, since the build-up of neutronium would create a substantial gravity well, but she was confident it would withstand the avalanche of rocks against the frame.

Having built up their huge mass of rocks, Barriss said "Asajj, if you would deploy the bomb?"

"Certainly," said Asajj as she opened the door and telekinetically pushed the bomb out the door through the force field.

Everyone was in EVA suits. The tractor beam emitters seemed solid, but if they did fail, there was a good chance they would see that force field fail.

Barriss used the tractor beams on her ship to position the bomb against the rock pile and activated the bomb's tractor beams.

At first they had to use the skiff's tractor beam to feed rocks in.

But then the mass built up and as predicted, the extreme gravity flux started sucking in the rocks as predicted.

Another worry Barriss had was that the rocks would feed in too fast for the pressure to be maintained on the neutronium and that it would detonate, but that didn't happen either.

And then it was done.

"Swift Justice from Warhorse, form up and allow remote navigation."

Ahsoka brought the skiff belly to belly with Warhorse and announced "Swift Justice remote navigation enabled."

"Have that," said Barriss, she checked the remote link and said "Swift Justice, Warhorse, remote nav link five by five, de orbiting now." Barriss then set up the tractor beams of both ships on the bomb and dialled both ships engines up to combat power.

First thing was to get the right track

She wanted the peak of the orbital track on the same latitude as the catacomb.

The next thing was to get the energy down to the point where it would impact along the track, and then get the line to end on the catacombs.

This proved more of a palaver than Barriss would have liked, but ultimately the trajectory was right.

"Swift Justice from Warhorse, trajectory set, you have control."

"Got that," said Ahsoka as she gained some separation.

Barriss then sent "engaging bomb shield and transferring power to internal source," as she activated the shield and slowly dialled down the power she was sending. The batteries were fully on the whole time, the power form the ship simply kept their energy from being drawn.

Eventually "Bomb power fully internal, we are done," Barriss sent the disconnect command to the physical link and climbed over the bomb so that she could restore a stable orbital trajectory.

They had dropped below the ring, so they would potentially have been more visible than earlier for a while now, but there didn't seem to be any space traffic at all.

No one seemed particularly interested in Geonosis.

* * *

Cad emerged from the catacombs with his case of worms.

There always seemed to be plenty of worms down there if more were needed.

He arrived at his ship and got in.

After closing the door, he secured the case.

Again, he may not have a nose, but those things still scared him.

It was rare for something to scare Cad.

He didn't have a problem doing evil things, it's just the underlying concern he had that these evil things could end up enslaving him.

Still, turning down jobs is bad for business. So here he was.

He got into the pilot's seat and went through the start up sequence.

With no problems identified, he took off, looking for any threats.

The sensors suddenly drew his attention to a meteorite entering the atmosphere.

He'd be well away from it before it impacted ... ... The catacombs ... ...

Cad decided combat power would be a very sensible idea about now, the coincidence of this meteor going there and him being there to pick up mind worms was just too suspect.

The sensors estimated the object to be about one and a half metres wide.

Other points of interest was that it's estimated mass was several hundred tons, the ballistic trajectory matched to it's drag coefficient gave that impression, but the shape, derived from it's slow rotation ...

It impacted the catacombs.

The blast was immense.

Cad was hypersonic, so there was no chance that the blast overpressure would reach him, but what was that? Antimatter?

No, that mass in antimatter would have obliterated the Geonosis system.

Cad was torn between getting his worms to Corouscant and investigating the blast site.

He decided to investigate the blast site.

There was an upper limit to the blast overpressure dictated by Geonosis's atmosphere. His ship would be fine.

He got below the exhaust cloud, which was reaching up into space.

"Well, there's no kill like overkill," commented Cad. His sensors were also reading a lot of radiation.

Too much.

So much his shield were having problems fending it all off.

"Okay, that's my curiosity sated," said Cad as he pulled up to clear the atmosphere.

* * *

"And that's Neutronium is it?" asked Asajj.

"Yep."

The dome of material slowly expanding into space from the hypocentre was HUGE.

Karking HUGE.

"There's no way any worms survived that," said Asajj.

"Oop, hold up, got a bogey," said Barriss as she pointed her ship towards where her sensor says it is.

Asajj returned to the tactical station and locked weapons on it saying "judy, what do you reckon? They got some worms?"

"Kark all else you'd come here for," said Barriss, "can't be sure though. ... Can't take the chance. We intercept, but make with the trackers too, in case we fail to splash this guy."

Barriss got them moving sending "swift justice from warhorse, we're attacking a contact leaving the planet, remain hidden until it's dead, remember, you can't be seen helping us as you are linked to Shili."

There was no reply.

"Swift Justice from Warhorse, please acknowledge," sent Barriss.

"Yeah, I got that," groused Ahsoka.

* * *

Cad saw something on his tactical sensor.

He grinned maniacally as he saw the exact ship Sidious had sent him after heading his way.

And it had weapons lock on him.

"I love it when the prey think they're the hunter, it's so much more funny that way," as he locked his weapons on the ship and engaged.

* * *

"Whoa, this guy wants us bad," said Barriss, "missile inbound," she dropped decoys and danced the ship while Asajj sent warning shots at the ship. She locked on the tracking device gun on the ship which was now dancing madly. She fired off a tracker.

"Shavit," snarled Asajj.

They kept dancing.

Second tracker miss.

Third missed.

"Getting close to bingo here," commented Barriss.

"Yeah, thanks," said Asajj as she kept firing.

* * *

This was a bit difficult.

Well, more than a bit Cad had to admit, he got precisely one shot off, but that had missed, and he couldn't get his guns or missiles on that ship long enough to do anything. He was going to have to dip into the debris ring and draw that ship in if he wanted a chance at getting them.

He headed for the debris and the ship gave chase.

Then it pulled clear. Climbing up out of the equatorial plane of Geonosis.

Cad watched what they were doing, wondering what they were setting up to do. He couldn't think of a good reason for them to deliberately do something that would lose ground on him.

They evidentially knew about the mind worms, Barriss had obviously had one of those things up her nose, and now those catacombs were reduced to radioactive lava, so it was probably them what blew it up too. They wanted him.

They jumped to hyperdrive.

...

Eh?

...

Why break contact?

...

Trick?

Weapons?

Decoy?

Panic?

Fuel?

...

Irrelevant.

Cad set course for Corouscant and karked off.


End file.
